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RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS
OR,

THE SCIENCE AND ART

OP

MAN'S DELIVERANCE
FROM

IGNORANCE-ENGENDERED MYSTICISM,
AND ITS RESULTING

THEO-MORAL QUACKERY
AND

GOVERNMENTAL BRIGANDAGE.
BY CALYIN BLANCHARD.

" Natureis all-sufficient

; man's fancied " supernatural " longing is her index to the perfec-
which development, including science and art, irrepressibly tend. All evil is conse-
tion to
quent on ignorance, skepticism and despair, with respect to the power of the substantial,
through spontaneity and practical organization, and combination, to complete the all-im-
portant half of its undertaking to create supply, adequate to demand to inaugurate
; ;

Heaven on Earth."—Religion of Science.

NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY C. BLANCHARD, 76 NASSAU STREET.
COMMOK ERA, 1861.
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1361. by

CALVIN BLANCHARD,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for thk>. Southern District

of New York.
 EAD THIS BOOK!
If you are not quite sure that perfection in religious
knowledge was achieved eighteen hundred and sixty
years ago, READ THIS BOOK!
If you are not entirely contented with the practical
working of moralism, for the particulars of which,
consult the world's daily records, READ THIS
BOOK!
If you happen to have ever so slight misgivings
with respect to the reality of the freedom which " elect*
ive franchise " secures, READ THIS BOOK !

If you are not irredeemably pledged to the horrid

delusion that man is the inextricably doomed victim

of mystery-religion, self-crucifying morality, and
monarchy, aristocracy, or majority-tyranny, READ
THIS BOOK!
If you have not irrevocably pronounced it impos-
sible th at physical science and art can eliminate mys-
tical, indeterminate speculation from religion and
law, as completely as they have thrust such vexatious
charlatanry from so many lower natural departments,
READ THIS BOOK!
If you believe in the development-theory of crea-
tion, and behold in Nature The All-Sufficient,
READ THIS BOOK!
 §L INTRODUCTORY.
No truths can be more evident than that mankind uni-
versally have a right to all that they are constituted to
desire, and that nature can grant it.
To deny this is to insult justice, blaspheme the only
Almighty that we can know anything about, and fall back
on natural depravity, and the whole scheme of anthropo-
morphize theology, including vicarious sacrifice, temporal
" punishment " for " crime," and "eternal " " vengeance "
for " sin."
But man's claim to perfect and sufficiently lasting happi-
ness, or complete liberty, necessarily involves certain con-
ditions to be by him fulfilled. For if man could miracu-
lously have whatever he wished for, he would find that he
could wish for nothing that would not be perfectly insipid
at first, and intolerably nauseous immediately thereafter.
" Eternal " and unconditional happiness, to be enjoyed
without organs, is the most absurd fancy that human folly
ever tried to entertain ; and everlasting consciousness would
necessarily be, at best, but perpetual ennui to all beings not
wholly destitute of sense.
The mutual functions of the priests of religion and officers
of government self-evidently should be, to study human and
lower material nature, and thence deduce a civil constitu-
tion and body of law ; and in accordance with these,
organize man so that he can assist development, direct pro-
gress, so harmoniously modify, and powerfully and advan-
tageously combine his own force and that of all else in his
connection as to produce such a condition of things that to
desire will be to have, with but the intervention of just
exertion enough to give due value to possession, and pro-
long his conscious existence, under these circumstances, till
all the varieties of happiness presentable to the five senses
exhaust their value by repetition. All religion that aims
beyond this is delusion. All government that aims short of
this is failure.
In consequence of religion and government lacking this
intelligible and practical aim, man, bewildered by mystery,
has been the dupe of sacerdotal fraud, and the victim of
political quackery and experimenting.
As all evil is physical) spiritual prescriptions are quack-
 ;

4 KELIGIO-FOUTICAL PHYSICS.

ery. As all man's cravings are for material good, " imma-
teriality " cannot satisfy them. As no sane person can
voluntarily act except from selfish motives, " disinterested-
ness" is a fallacy, "duty"" and " conscience " are most
treacherous snares, and moral codes are perfect abortions.
The religions aspirations are the premonitory symptoms
that natnre, whose cerebrum or positive organ of highest
thought manifests them, is pregnant with perfection. Man
is nature's forehead, the lower animals are her backhead.
Skepticism is the last analysis of abstraction the most —
absurd, of all absurdities— the most inane of inanities.
—
That theo-religio-fungus Protestantism, and its resulting
papular free discussion of religion, are not causes, but mere
incidental accompaniments of human advancement. They
compose the fifth wheel of the car of progress, the empty
rattling and singular appearance of which monopolize vul-
gar notice.
Freedom of thought, of speech, and of the press, like
praying and moralizing,, can do no more toward actually
freeing or benefiting mankind, than they can toward liberat-
ing the action of a watch, steam-engine, or spinning-jenny ?
which don't work freely, because the parts are not fitted to
each other, or harmoniously, and in a workmanlike manner,
related.
So long as religion a mysterious puzzle, law will be a
is
vexatious mockery order, a subterfuge for tyranny j
;

government^ an arbitrary imposition ; liberty, an illusion

right, a fiction ; justice, an exile ; peace, a mere armistice ;
and happiness, non est inventus.
Union and organization alone can give strength ; strength,
freedom ; freedom, happiness. But union and organization
must be for good instead of for evil. All power is capable of
abuse in exact proportion as it is capable of use. No power
can be absolutely destroyed, or even rendered indifferent.
Theological vagaries and absurdities, political folly,
quackery, and fraud, and governmental brigandage, waste
and profligacy cannot cease, till education is reorganized on
an objective basis, the claims of labor, skill and capital
equitably adjusted, the affections emancipated, woman libe-
rated and enthroned as the object of man's adoration,*
development that science,
children's rights' to the perfect
and lower nature can give them, secured, human law
'art,
based on physics, faith strengthened past wavering, and

* See "Religion of Science/' p. 127, and "Essence of Science," pp. bl-2.

 —
RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. '
5

transferred from miracle to development reposed in the —

ministers of the science of sciences and art of arts, instead of
in the priests of mystery and superstition, or instead of
being destro.yed, or sacrificed on the altar of skepticism
till nature, including science and art, is looked up to as
The All- Sufficient.

§ 2. INCONSISTENCY AND INCOMPETENCY OF PRESENT

RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT.
Democracy in America is an awkward and servile imita-
tion of the theo-governmental polity which monarchical
Europe mainly begged from barbaric Asia, who learned it
in schools as savage as those which ignorance now keeps in
the most heathenish regions of Africa. " Our free institu-
tions," apart from the little physical science and art that
have become stealthily interwoven therein, are absurd and
futile attempts to build the temple of liberty with the same
kind of materials as those which compose the dungeon of
despotism, with the mortifying exception, that they are in
the last stage of decay.
Daniel Webster, and other eminent American jurists, have
correctly decided that the government of the United States,
notwithstanding constitutional divorcement from reli-
its
gion, is, Christian ; in truth, a surreptitious or
essentially,
'•
left-handed " theocracy.*
Lord Macaulay glorifies those avowed unions of Church
—
and State monarchies and aristocracies for being more —
efficient than democracies, in preserving a civilization which
superabundantly piles the world's wealth into the hands of
a few, and degrades the majority of mankind to " a multi-
tude of people, none of whom have had more than half a
breakfast, or expect to have more than half a dinner." f

* See Webster's plea in the Girard will case.

u Life of Jeffer-
f See Macaulay's letter to Henry S. Randall, author of the
son."
The magistrate for the county of Berks, in England, has communicated to the
" London Times " of December 10, 1860, a statement respecting the condition
of the peasantry in nineteen towns and villages, as " a fair sample of the con-
dition of the agricultural laboring population of England." A
mere synopsis
of the details of this statement would occupy about three pages of this work.
They are as horrible and revolting as words can describe, or even imagination
paint ; they come fully up, or rather down, to what Eugene Sue describes in
4*
The Mysteries of Paris." " Our peasantry," remarks the u Times" on this
communication, " are far icorse lodged than our beasts of burden." Besides the
worse than beastly lodging, and starvation and nakedness to match, parents
and adult children, and brothers and sisters men and women grown, ciowdedly
sleep in the same room, and often in the same bed together " pell-mell" and
6 KELIGI0-P0LITICAL PHYSICS.

James Buchanan, whose presidency over this nation

terminates in the year of grace one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-one, in his last annual Message, extols Democracy
as " the noblest system of government over devised by mor-
tals ;" meaning, as is evident from the theological bearing
of all he says in the connection, that the government of
the United States is the best ever founded on subjectivity,
moralism, or any phase of the theologic phantasm.
In his magniloquent bunkum, the President is sustained
by the unanimous " whoraws " of that overwhelming but
uncritical and easily led portion of mankind which com-
poses " the masses " (and whom it will be easier to lead
right than wrong as soon as their leaders understand their
own true interests), and by the opinions, as far as expressed,
of all his predecessors ; none of whom seem to have had
more than a glimmering idea of any other than a subjective,
speculative, moralistic, supernaturalistic, arbitrary founda-
tion for the government of mankind.
But President Buchanan frankly admits and sorely
laments that the practical operation of "the noblest system
of government ever devised by mortals," has been to bring
the Union, of which it is the cement, into the very throes
of dissolution, only eighty-four years after its formation !

" The noblest system of government ever devised by mor-

tals " has a currency so fluctuating that property is as inse-
cure, and business as risky, as they can possibly be and ;

that currency is so inflated, that it cheats the people into

that most mischievous fallacy, that it is better to import
than to manufacture; and plunges them into the folly of
raising corn, cotton, and infernal tobacco, and sending them
three or four thousand miles to market, and of distilling
whisky at forty cents a gallon, to be poisoned in France,
and sent back again as brandy, at from four to eight dollars
a gallon, when they might raise the pure wine and brandy
producing grape, and have, within five or ten miles, a ready

some daughters have as many as four bastards. And this is Protestant, Christ*
ian England! This is moral England! This is England, the very bulwark of
holy matrimony ! This is England that has abolished slavery ! This is England
that cants so edifyingly about French licentiousness! This is the England that
is more afraid than any nation on earth (except Puritanical Scotland, that has
more bastards and drunkards, in proportion to its inhabitants, than has any
other country) that if marital bondage was abolished, or even loosened, pro*
miscuous intercourse and licentiousness would result I
And " Britannia rules the waves," and the sun never sets on her empire ,

but may that sun speedily shine his last on all such mockeries of religion, law
justice, government, and civilization.
 RELIGIOP0L1TICAL PHYSICS. 7

market for the numerous products which a well-regulated

currency would employ home industry upon, besides abol-
ishing that suction-pipe of political thieves, the tariff.
" Ihe noblest system of government ever devised by mor-
tals" plunged the United States into universal bankruptcy
only sixty-one years after its inauguration ; and from the
very first, it has tormented the millions who, as inhabitants
of the said States, have reposed faith in it, with a constant
succession of " panics.' 5
And finally, the damning truth defies contradiction, that
throughout the vast region wherein prevails " the noblest
system of government ever devised by mortals," all the
labor is performed by " wages-slaves " and " chattel-slaves ;"
the best judges cannot decide which are most miserable;
and people of superior benevolence and understanding con-
tend that both slaves and masters are equally entitled to
pity.*
^

In view of all this, I hope that the reflecting portion of

mankind, to whom alone I appeal, will not accuse me of
temerity in claiming, as I do, to have discovered a substi-
tute, by which it will be incalculably advantageous to dis-
place not only monarchy and aristocracy as at present con-
stituted, but even " the noblest system of government ever
devised by mortals," in Mr. Buchanan's estimation.
"The noblest system of government," I shall demonstrate,
will be one that will make liberty perfect and actual, extend
it to all, physically prepare the whole earth for it, and
" enlarge the area of freedom " from pole to pole.
That the government of the United States is really the

* Those who uphold chattel-slavery are perfectly consistent with respect to

those who oppose it in favor of wages-slavery, or who do not look to an entire

reorganization of the social and governmental polity of the world. Would not the
slave-trade, if provisionally regulated, instead of vainly opposed and driven into
its self-preservative horrors, be a boon to the African, rescued from immolation
on the altar of savage warfare, or even kidnapped from his horrible brutality ?
Are the plantation negroes and negresses of the South, or the hod-carriers,
under-ground steam-engine tenders, and seamstresses of the North least miser-
able ? And was the chattel-slave revolution of Hayti, or the wages-slave
revolution of France, the most sanguinary ? In spite of the navies of all civi-
lized nations, the slave-trade is vigorously kept up. A great number of new
slave vessels are annually fitted up at the New York ship yards even. These hell-
craft, in order to escape detection and elude pursuit, have to be so built that
about twenty per cent, of their human cargoes die of suffocation. Often,
to avoid capture, their officers and crew run them aground in the night,
escape to the shore in boats, and leave sometimes as many as five hundred
chained negroes to perish with the wreck. This, together with the suffoeation
horror abovementioned, regulating and licensing the slave-trade would have
prevented.
8 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

very opposite of what is "constitutionally" and specu-

it

appear from the following speci-

latively, will sufficiently
men of the choice theological and most unconstitutional
morsels with which the late message of that greatest of all
sticklers for " The Constitution," President Buchanan, is
interspersed " My prayer to God is, that he would preserve
;

the Constitution and the Union."

" The Union" has, constitutionally, insulted all the min-
isters of " God," and given "God" himself to understand
that it smallest coin for him or his "religion."
don't care its
It flatly tells him
that its "^Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion." Yet the President
coolly asks "God" to "preserve the Constitution and the
Union !"
This decidedly beats the presumptuousness of the man
who, one cold, stormy night, being pressed by sudden neces-
sity, made a most abominable use of the portico of a house
belonging to a gentleman wdiom, together with his whole
family, he had most grossly and publicly insulted, hurriedly
rang the bell, and importunately demanded a leaf of the
family Bible but did not carry his impudence so far as to
;

insist that his repudiated friend should apply the sacred

paper to the vile office for which it was required.
In further proof of what a jumble of treachery and hum-
bug " The Constitution " is, I will call the reader's atten-
tion to the fact that the President aforesaid has, since the
promulgation of his said theological Message, issued a Pro-
clamation, stuck as brim full of the very t% religion " that
" The Constitution " is specially aimed against, as any pope's
bull apostolical could possibly be, appointing a clay of
"fasting, humiliation, and prayer," and abandoning "the
Union," "Constitution," and all, to their repudiated " God,"
in these terms: "God's arm only can save us from the
—
awful effects of our own crimes and follies our own ingrati-
tude and guilt toward our Heavenly Father."
In the name of all that is not stark staring madness or
slavering idiocy, I ask, has not this nation had enough of
humiliation ? Bullies and blackguards are prominently
among its high functionaries during the present and
;

several preceding administrations, official thieves have run

away with no inconsiderable amount of its funds swindlers,
;

both " elected " and appointed, have revelled in its treasury,
and its next President, or head distributer of spoils, has
been chosen to that honorable office, on the strength of h's
having been a soldier in the Black Hawk War, a commc n
 :

EELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 9

laborer on a farm, a roller of logs in a saw-mill, and a rail-

splitter; the last qualification being trumpeted as the most
important of all; it unquestionably secured his election so
far as the popular vote was concerned.
And are not the people to whom the aforesaid Proclama-
tion is addressed, in a fair way, thanks to demagogism, to
have enough of the virtue of fasting, without being speci-
ally exhorted thereunto ? And is not this presidential con-
duct, both in fact, and more especially in manner, contrary
to the very spirit of " The Constitution V
Can't the weakest noddle outside of Bedlam perceive that
" The Constitution " is a weathercock that readily turns
whichever way the breath of demagogism, cant, and hum-
bug blow s ? '
r

Mr. Buchanan is certainly one of the most expert gamesters

— —
that ever shuffled those convenient cards the people though
he is sorely put to his trumps, and makes some grave mistakes
during the latter end of his game. But I candidly ask those
who are gifted with a capacity for reflection at all uncom-
mon, if his Proclamation does not bear fifty marks of hav-
ing emanated from a negro Methodist camp-meeting, to one
of having come from the head of a government, the union
between which and the church has been dissolved? Let
any one who has a voice attuned to bass cant, read that Pro-
clamation, appropriately intersperse it with Methodistic
groans, amen-ers and glory-to-God-ers, and see if I have
overrated its sanctimoniousness.
All remember the great Swartwout robbery, and, during
the last four years, the following specimens of political smart-
ness stick out so prominently as to come instantly to mind
the Fort Snelling job diddled the people out of $400,000-;
Willett's Point do., $150,000 ;New Bedford Fort Site do.,
$30,000 Utah Flour Contract do., $160,000 Utah Corn
; ;

Contract do., $270,000; Utah Mule Sale do., $240,000 ; El

Paso Wagon Eoad do., $200,000 Fowler Defalcation do.,
;

$175,000 Godard Bailey's Eobbery do., $870,000. Add to

;

these the millions on millions of expenses not here enume-

rated, of the Mormon Expedition, got up on purpose to give
army contracts, etc., etc., etc., to those who had done party
service, for which no other subterfuge could be devised for
rewarding, and say if "The Union" is not sufficiently
humiliated.
Until " Old Buck," " Old Abe," or some of their succes-
sors in the chair of state, issue a proclamation recommend-
ing that the word "consistency" be expurgated from the
1*
10 KELIGIOPOLITICAL PHYSICS.

dictionary, or that the first clause of the first Article of the

" Amendments to The Constitution " be stricken out, " The
Model Republic" will justly be the laughing-stock, not only
of the more intelligent portion of mankind, but of the
broken-down theological dynasty of Rome itself.
Let me not be understood to insinuate even, that Presi-
dent Buchanan is not as consistent as were any of his prede-
cessors, except Washington, whom an unfortunate train of
events compelled to take the lead in founding our theo-
democratic Utopia ; and as " conscientious " a man as has
occupied the White House since the abominable political
theory that " to the victors belong the spoils," has been in
full practice.
" Old Buck " rode into the Presidency on a hobby foaled
of that most speculative of abstractions —" The Constitu-
tion." " Old Abe " rode in on a rail. And the difference
between their administrations, other things being equal, will
be precisely the odds between fiddlededum and fiddlededee.
And this rule will hold good with respect to the compara-
tive merits of any two presidents that have held, or may
hold office under theo-democratic constitutionalism.
But let us hope and strive that the last Proclamation of
the President, and the recent Bull of the Pope may be
among the last vestiges of the Dark Ages. I say among
the last, for Pius IX. may be foolish enough to let loose
another hornless Bull, and it is hardly possible but that
pious "Old Abe" will, in order not to be outdone in any-
thing by " Old Buck," give our religious putridity another
stirring up, and our bogus Constitution another besmearing
with the rotten theology which essentially composes our
counterfeit democracy.
Whilst the United States is, religiously, the common
slush-tub for excrescent supernaturalism, whilst the first
clause of the first Article of u Amendments to the The Con-
stitution " remains, and so long as our chief magistrates con-
tinue to issue such Messages and Proclamations as they
have in the main hitherto done, why not give them their
—
full titles ? to wit: President of The United States, Chief
Priest of Unconstitutional Religion, Wholesale Dealer in
Contraband Christianity, and Defender, Protector and Pre-
server of Dilapidated Episcopacy and Third-hand Popery.
It being late at night when I finished writing the last sen-
tence, I reclined back in my chair for a recess, fell asleep,
and dreamed that I was translated to the twenty -first cen-
tury. Everything was astonishingly improved. As the
 !

KELIGI0-P0L1TICAL PHYSICS. 11

readiest method of finding out how, I opened a dictionary

"bearing that date, and read :
—
Constitution The embodiment of science, or system of
physics, on which government or human law is based.
Formerly, during the age of metaphysical absurdity,
opinionism, speculative abstraction, and religio-political
obfuscation, the main cord of that infernally vexatious
entanglement in utter disregard of meaning called law;
into the meshes of which, those most wily and dangerous
of all knaves, politicians, wheedled man, when he was only
55
P civilized, and therefore excessively verdant, to confine
himself J ostensibly, that he might not run wild, or other-
wise abuse his boasted right to " the pursuit of happiness ; 55
but really, that they might swindle, and plunder, and insult
him wT ith impunity. "The Constitution 55 was, of course,
the darling theme and favorite hobby of theo-democratic
bandits of all parties. It was the common scape-goat of
stupendous fraud and gigantic wrong. Imaginarily, (on
the part of the masses,) the guaranty for free government
lieally, the height of political folly. Essentially, gammon.
The Social Organism never endured constitutionalism, and
its cooppression,
u elective franchise, 55 long at a time. It
frantically chose even military dictatorship, in its stead.

§ 3 GENERAL VIEW OF THE PHYSICAL FOUNDATION FOR

PRACTICAL RELIGION AND ACTUAL FREEDOM.
Man will be the victim of theo-religio-politieal anarchy
and oppression, and the dupe of mystery, metaphysics, and
their resulting Utopianism, till religion (necessarily the
theory to which government must, openly or sub rosa, be
the practice) is a combination of science, as fast as developed,
for the perfection of man and all lower materiality in the
connection, up to the point to which nature, through the
highest human aspiration, manifests her aim ; and till, to
this science of sciences, government corresponds as the art
of artstill, through development, and the modification and
;

combination of human* and other substantial power, law

becomes, to every member of the Social Organism, what
gravitation is to the celestial spheroids which compose the
—
Solar System a perfeeier and insurer of order and actual
freedom. But I shall treat this vast subject somewhat
^

specially, and with reference to measures immediately to be

taken, in its proper place. In the meantime, I pledge my-
self to advance no theory which I shall not demonstrate to
 —
12 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

—
be practical none that is not indispensably necessary to be
understood before the inauguration of true religion, and
actually free government, can be successfully undertaken.
All governmeLt that has ever existed has been mere
short-sighted, make-shift polity what is most lyingly called
;

democracy, or elective government, is peculiarly so any ;

polity that should look beyond present emergency, the neces-

sarily special-minded multitude, misled by demagogue*,
would sneer at as " mere theory." Popular government is
therefore a constant succession of changes without alteration
for the better, but for the worse, at the rapid rate in which
continual shifting impoverishes. If nature had formed all
mankind, or even u the majority," equally capable of know-
ing, a priori, or before trial, what national measures would
—
be best, that common phrase " the masses " would have —
no significance
Equality is the Procrustean opponent of every organic
thing in nature. Equality, nature abhors exactly in pro-
portion to the difference between the Sun and the smallest
satellite in his free empire. Equcdity, therefore, is the
roughest shod hobby on which the most brutal and unre-
—
lenting tyrants the most insatiate political brigands ever —
trampled down human rights.
To what a rotten condition equality has brought govern-
ment, in the United States, during the short period in the
life of a nation of only eighty-four years. Our equality-
nursed Social Organism has, almost from the first, groaned
panic, bankruptcy, defalcation, corruption, and repudiation
of contracts and now it shrieks dissolution.
:

The world wants a government, the freedom and stability

of which shall correspond to the freedom and stability that
characterize the spheroids of which the Solar Empire is
composed and I shall demonstrate that this is not only
;

possible, but the only government that can be established /

that can be government that can put an end to anarchy.
;

§ 4. THE TEIUHE THEOLOGICAL MYSTERY HATU&ALLY

SOLVED.
" God is something more than a mere moral order of the world, and
has quite another and a more living motive power in himself than is
ascribed to him by the jejune subtility of abstract idealists. Why then
dost thou shrink from naming the nature of God by its true name ?
Evidently only because thou hast a general horror of things in their
truth and reality because thou lookest at all things through the decep-
;

tive vapors of mysticism." Feuerbacfrs Essence of Christianity.

 — —
—

RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 13

" Man cannot even desire miracle-happiness the "supernatural" does

;

not hear thinking of; its very wording involves as many contradictions
as statements —
as many absurdities as propositions."
" The existence of mind, apart from its positive and negative substan-
tial requisites, is inconceivable. An immaterial Heaven could be of
'
'

no value to material man, or even to what he egotistically assumes to be

his mind or 'spirit,' admitting that that function of brain and coope-
rating materiality could exist disembodied. "
k 1
Religion of Science.

Materiality (always bearing in mind its capacity for de-

velopment, including science and art) is adequate to all for
which miracle can be conceivably invoked. Human and
lower natural forces, through the harmonious modification
and all-powerful combinations of which they are susceptible,
are competent to solve the liberty problem to clear up the —
immortality-enigma— to inaugurate Heaven on Earth.*
Matter is God the Almighty Father, Man is God the lest
beloved Son —
one with the Father nature's highest organ —
—
of mind her cerebrum.
Mind is God the Holy Ghost the Sanctifier or Sanc- —
* I must gratefully acknowledge, that to that embodiment of science
—
" The Positive Philosophy " of Auguste Comte I am indebted for a clear
conception of the all-sufficiency of nature. Before studying that, I. considered
man the inextricable dupe of priestcraft, and the shuttlecock of theo-monarchi-
cal and theo-democratical violence, oppression, and spoliation. Comte him-
self did not know what a foundation he had laid,* as is evident from the
incompatible religio-political superstructure that he arbitrarily and specula-
tively raised thereon. This is but natural. The wonder would have been, had
one intellect proved sufficient to the task of not only discovering the foundation,
but of laying out the plan of the temple of true liberty. The emissaries of
superstition give u The Positive Philosophy " as wide a berth as the captain
of the most unseaworthy vessel would give a lee-shore in a storm but they;

dwell with peculiar delight and most infernal cowardice on Comte's u Positive
Religion" and 4<
Positive Politics ;" with respect to which that just appreciator
—
ot Comte himself Mr. G. H. Lewes —
amiably remarks: "Over his (Comte's)
subsequent efforts to found a social doctrine, and to become the founder of a
new religion, let us draw a veil. They are unfortunate attempts which remind
us of Bacon's scientific investigations and, in the minds of many, these un-
;

fortunate attempts will create a prejudice against what is truly grand in his
philosophic career. In the Cours de Philosophic Positive '(' Positive Phi-
'

losophy') we have the grandest, because on the whole the truest, system which
Philosophy has yet produced ; nor should any differences, which must inevi-
tably arise on points of detail, make us forget the greatness of the achieve-
ment and the debt we owe to the lonely thinker who wrought out this system."
— Lewes' Biographical History of Philosophy ; (published by D. Apple ton &
Co. " The Positive Philosophy " is published by 0. Blanchard.)

* Comte Laid the foundation whereon to realize those magnificent conceptions of Fourier
the equitable adjustment of the claims of labor, skill, and capital, and passional emancipation.
But the task was too mighty for the intellectual organs of any one man to perform with impu-
nity. Fourier, like Comte, Bacon, Kepler, and so many other intellectual giants, strained his
organs of thought, and committed vagaries in minor "points of detail;" and science and art
will continue to have their martyrs till human emancipation is complete. Fourier's great work,
"The Social Destiny o*. Man,'" is published by C. Blanenard.
 —
14 KELIGIOPOLITICAL PHYSICS.

—
tioner functional of the Father and the Son, and neces-
sarily one with them.
God the Son will be crucified to take away the sin of the
—
world he will be in antagonistic or crosswise connection
with everything till, through that only conceivable miracle
development through all human and lower material force
;

harmoniously liberated and most advantageously combined

for good, earth shall be transformed to Heaven. Then, God
the Son will sit glorified, at the right, instead of, as now, at
the wrong side of God the Father, and God the Holy Ghost
will, of course, be perfectly satisfied, and sanction or sanctify
all. Then, that subterfuge of ignorance, that lounge of men-
tal laziness — the great supernatural, supersensible God and
Father of inexplicable mystery, unintelligible balderdash,
and unsurpassable folly, will be eliminated. Then, the puz-
zling abstraction that is now worshipped as the Almighty, and
the wretched mockery of religion immediately consequent
thereon, will, like the arch which the stone-mason forms in
imagination, and the provisional wooden one which he con-
sequently erects, be superseded by the substantial and
efficient.
Man's holiness-befogged or " heavenly " desires are the
very quintessence of sensuousness they are nothing more,
;

and nothing less, than substantial nature's drafts on develop-

ment, which will most assuredly be paid, and in the very
currency which alone can discharge them, when legally pre-
sented—when presented in the only way that could make
their payment value received. Yet man, deceived by his
—
unworthy agents in the case the bogus priesthood, or false
—
clergy mopes through the world, panic-stricken, and
reviling nature as a bankrupt, with the keys to her ample
treasury actually in his possession too discouraged to try to
;

practically use them thinking it " too good to be true,"

;

that he has the intelligible means whereby to open and find

all that he can really wish for.
Let any one whose rationality in the matter of religion has
not been completely subverted, compare my exposition of
the " three in one and one in three," with any other, and
candidly say which can be best understand. Nay, I chal-
lenge all believers in " supernaturalism " to say, upon oath,
if any expositions of "The Trinity," in accordance with
their creed, are sufficient to hang a thought upon.
The Jews, from whom Christians acknowledge that they
received all they pretend to know about God the Father,
deny all knowledge of this God's eternal Son. And it was
 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 15

only eighteen hundred years ago, according to the Christian

record, that anything was ever spoken concerning the third
—
partner in the theological firm the Holy Ghost.
Those who are curious with respect to the minutia of
" supernaturalism," I refer to the " Devil's Pulpit," by
Robert Taylor, and to that most profound work on Mytho-
logy, " The Life of Jesus Critically Examined," by Dr. David
Friedrich Strauss, a work which, says Theodore Parker,
is " the most formidable assailant of the ecclesiastical the-
ology of Christendom."
But those for whom these pages are specially intended,
need not be told that all the dramatis personam in the great
farce of man's supernatural creation, burlesque fall, parsi-
monious redemption, and wholesale damnation, are but
mistakes, personifications, and myths. All gospel preachers,
even, except the thickest skulled brawlers, let out this
secret to such of their hearers as have brains to compre-
hend.
Of all supernatural personages, the Devil is surely the one
in whom there is most reason to believe. Even in orthodox
estimation, he is " the God of this world." His armies crowd
the " broad road," whilst the followers of his opponent, only
" here and there " dot the " narrow path." Yet the Rev.
Henry Ward Beecher says, that " mirthfulness has exorcised
the Devil a hundred times !"
So ! There goes the Devil ! A
summary disposition of
his Dread Majesty "Well, /comprehend, /" take,"
! enjoy I
the fun of the thing. But, Sir, the majority of your congre-
gation evidently do not understand that the black, cloven-
footed, long-tailed monster who populates Hell, and on
whose account God's Son, was crucified, is only a fit of
—
hypochondriasis ! a mere " blue devil " that Jo Miller or
W. E. Burton could beat you, or Jesus Christ either, all to
nothing in " casting out."
Your jokes, sir, would be very serious ones for yourself,
were they universally comprehended, unless you chose to turn
right about, and preach the new gospel of science, instead
of the worn-out, devil-spell of mystery. Come, now; do
but this, and Til take one thousand dollars' worth of shares
in your new meeting-house to begin with devote myself
;

wholly to the church, and espouse the cause of all the

clergy who follow your example, with more energy, if pos-
sible, than I have ever opposed theo-deviltry, or religio-
political swindling.
Some of your puns, though good, are still much inferior
 ;

16 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

to those of an ordinary clown in a circus, that any gloomy

demoniac can enjoy the benefit of for twenty-five cents
and if your congregation generally understood the drift of
them, depend upon it, they would soon cease to pay you any-
thing like five thousand dollars a year for them.
If" "the Devil" signifies the dumps, why may not the
everlastingly spiteful "Holy Ghost" personify the sulks;
" Christ ""be a myth, " God " a nullity, " divine revelation"
the mutual bantling of ignorance and imposture, and all
who preach it, either swindlers or blunderheads ? Why not ?
Apropos of demonology, I will say to all those of whom
the Devil has taken possession in consequence of gorman-
—
dizing or eating late suppers "fast;" and "pray" your
convivial friends not to "lead you into temptation." I don't
claim to be the sole author of this prescription ; for, with but
slight alteration, as all who have- read the Evangelists will
perceive, 'tis as old as that wine-bibbing metamorphosis of
Bacchus called Christ, on whom is fathered so many queer
parables or conundrums, and to whom is falsely attributed
the choicest bon-mots of Zoroaster, Plato and Confucius.
Strange that " infidels " do not perceive, that if the mul-
titude were capable of investigating a subject as abstruse as
religion, the atheism of all the intelligent preachers, and the
little pains they take to disguise it, would be quite sufficient
to convert them to mere unbelievers.
Clergymen of talent, I implore you to abandon a system
that you are evidently so ashamed of that you cannot but
despise yourselves for advocating, and openly and fully
preach the religion of science. Oh, if you would but do
this, how soon man would have the Millennium that he now
but faintly dreams of. And your salaries would increase
instead of diminishing, your situations would be perfectly
secure, provided you had the requisite qualifications to ful-
fill them, and your influence would be supreme ; all which

I shall demonstrate further on.

§ 5. 0TT& THEO-POLITICAL CHAOS.

The most advanced States throughout the world are

openly or sub rosa, united with, and subordinated to, a
Church, the fundamental dogma of which was promulgated
by man when he was in his primitive savageness, and
necessarily so inexperienced that the most correct judgment
by him formable, could be no other than the most erroneous
one imaginable ; when pure conjecture was the only practi-
 KELIGIO-POLITXCAL PHYSICS.
~
17

eability —
the sole alternative to utter doubt when the only
:

possible religious theory was that monstrous assumption, at

—
variance with all experience the anthropomorphize phan-
tasm;* according to which, that mere subjective and
objective, positive and negative function of cerebral and
—
cooperating external materiality the will, is almighty, and
independent of substantiality.
The doctrines resulting from such a premise are now, of
course, in monstrous contrast with nineteenth century
science and art they are practically dead,f wwse than use-
;

less, and held beneath contempt by all people of more than

ordinary understanding. The higher clergy preach them
for salary, as the more intelligent and scientific members of
society, when they condescend to hear them, do so for
patronage. u Smart preachers " are so ashamed of the
faith they profess, that in their anxiety to make known their
unbelief in it to their hearers whose mental comprehensions
are general, and above the ordinary calibre, they barely dis-
guise their infidelity from those whose critical acumen is
naturally, appropriately, and necessarily confined to speci-
alities— from the most unreasonably despised, insultingly
flattered and cajoled, and abominably abused multitude, by
whom both themselves and their decoys aforesaid are sus-
tained.
Metaphysical abstractions confessedly mysterious, utterly
—
contradictory, absurd, and unintelligible deductions from
half-deciphered remains of the nursery legends of the Social
Organism's infancy, are jumbled up with that most insinua-
tive deception, that immaculate abortion, the theo-morality
illusion, and presented as religion! An opaque entangle-
ment equally transcendental, subjective, and indeterminate,
is consequently palmed off as law And a treachery so
!

inimitable as to appear, to the simple-minded, to have

a direct, undeviating meaning, whilst it is susceptible of any
tortuosity of construction that corrupted judges choose to
give it, is, in countries where that liberty-mockery, that
wildest of Utopianism, the caucus-and-ballot-box delusion,
prevails, imposed as a " Constitution !"
The full operation of this subjective, transcendental,
theo political hodge-podge, this consummation of religio-
governmental abuse, is to give half a breakfast to the many,
and half a million or so to the grasping few; con-

* See " Essence of Science." pages 5 to 7.

" Positive Philosophy," page 402.
f See
18 ftELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

ditioned on sucli vexatious anxiety on the part of the latter,

lest they be added to the naked, houseless, starving multi-
tude, by falling stocks, breaking banks, defalcations, fail-
ures, etc., etc., etc., before dinner-time, that dyspepsia, rather
than nutrition, waits on what little appetite they have.
At periodical crises, these "institutions" torment so
excruciatingly that even the war-horror affords relief; and
bankruptcy-panics occur in such quick succession as to leave
no intervening complete respite. -

This perfect mockery of religion, law, and government,

its sponsors have the audacity to gravely assure mankind is
civilization — enlightenment, even! And they blasphe-
mously pronounce the extrication of man as man from his
misery, or even the radically and effectually bettering of his
sensible condition, to be
u impossible !" And the confiding,
awe-struck, wonder-confounded, and most treacherously
betrayed multitude reverently bow to their decrees, and
meekly accept their creations as the best hnowdble mani-
festations of infinite wisdom, love, and power
Theo-democratic quacks worse confound this confusion,
and give piquancy to its agony, by calling on all the igno-
rance and chicanery which it engenders, to regulate it!
Elective franchise is the most effectual screen of govern-
—
mental cupidity and villainy, the subterfuge of freedom's
most dangerous assassins. That medicine-chest of political
quackery ; that insidious and most fatal decoy of the
uncritical, short-sighted multitude —
the ballot-box, is the
great reservoir of the social quack-nostrums which worse
and worse aggravate whatever evils they are applied to
cure, till the dupes and victims of them gladly resign them-
selves to the comparatively tender mercies of military dic-
tatorship.*

* u The only disease that afflicts either the Social Organism or individual
man, is ignorance. Ignorance, with respect to the perfection of which nature,
through development, including science and art, is capable. The political
symptom of this disease is repression. Moral quacks, to hide their ignorance
with respect to how to satisfy the human passions, gravely pronounce these
passions natural depravities, and accordingly declare war against them.
Repression quickly touches that point in agony which renders humanity frantic,
in that form of government under which brute force, or majority power, man-
aged and directed by the basest and most ignorant (except in mere trickery) of
mankind, ruthlessly and continually trample down the most important and
evident human rights (passional rights), except bare life ; often does not spare
even that; and, equally with that more chronic human scourge monarchy —
sets aside all that can properly be called law. Popular Sovereignty is the
' '

bitterest mockery that mankind were ever insulted with. Elective Fran-
*

chise' is the most successful juggle, whereby political tricksters cheat a nation
of its liberty, and swindle it of its wealth. The people are the mere cards
 ! — — ,

BELIGTOPOLITICAL PHYSICS. 19

And cynics attempt to smother their consciousness of

ignorance, and to hide their misanthropy, by inculcating
the belief that the social compact is inevitable tyranny
that government is a "necessary evil?" "What an infernal
confession of faith
But the most inconsistent role in this miserable drama is
performed by those who, whilst fancying themselves fully
emancipated from superstition, embrace, for their creed
that most supernatural of supernaturalisms, the morality
phantasm; and proclaim, for their principal canon, that
essence of the crucifixion-scheme of salvation self-denial, —
or duty ; who depend, for all the reform that they can con-
ceive to be practical, on that pliant convertibility to even
—
theological sophistry reason ; whose maximum of liberty,
those indispensable aids to metaphysics and transcendental-
—
ism free thought, and free discussion are to compose ; and
whose measure of human rights is contracted to so much
comfort as individuals could secure, each for themselves, if
absolutely emancipated from religion, and completely " let
alone " by government ; in short, if there was no Social Organ-
ism. These doubly-deceived victims of the most wily form
of theo-religion (a form so treacherous as to exhibit prima
facie evidence of being earthly to skeptics, and satisfactory
evidence of being divine to believers) try to patch up mat-
ters so as to make our social purgatory endurable, by means
of promiscuous, undigested, practically aimless debates, and
by hurling merely negative arguments, and carefully unsys-
temized and therefore barren facts and truisms at mankind
indiscriminately but mainly at those who compose the
;

—
masses the body of the Social Organism ; and who, in
accordance with materiality's orderly economy, naturally
loathe nothing so thoroughly as disquisitions on what is too
general, abstract, and complicated for them to perceive its
practical bearing.
• Folly is rampant, corruption is at its height, anarchy is
I
as triumphant as it can be. The barbarous and even savage
portions of mankind persistently remain as they are, as
civilization practically manifests only that which excites
their disgust —
their contempt, even.

j
which these gamblers shuffle at their pleasure in the great game of State, All
I
the ' franchise
' that election
*
secures, is enjoyed by those who compose
'

!
the '
caucus,' do the *
wire-pulling,' and other party meanness, and win the
offices. The people's choice is only between this or that gang of conspira-
tors against mankind, who shriek liberty exactly in proportion as they mean
l oppression and spoils. The only true rcligiou mu*t be the science of sciences ;
the only free government, the art of arts." Essence of Science.
 J

20 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

Labor, capital, and skill are so antagonistically related

that their interests are as insecure as they can be. There is
the least possible responsibility everywhere, from the
responsibility of the national treasury and national credit,
to that of the most petty shop-keeper. In short, progress
has yet done little more practically in the way of increasing
the gross sum of human happiness, than the numerous arti-
sans engaged in clock and watch manufacturing have done
toward making time keepers, up to the point where they put
their wheels, springs, etc., etc., etc., together, fit their keys,
and wind up.
Is there nothing further to be expected? Is nature's
power taxed to the utmost? Has materiality pushed
development to its goal only to cap the climax of all imagin-
able absurdity ? only to create man necessarily self-misled,
self-cheated or cheating, and all but unendurably self-
tormented ? Is all that is knowable an irremediable
failure ?

No. I shall demonstrate that there is an intelligible,

practicable, and ample cure, a scientific, artistic, substantial
remedy for all the evil laid to the charge of nature, but
which ignorance, and its resulting nonsense-religion, quack-
government, and morality-delusion are on our
inflicting
false priest-ridden, skeptic-befooled, morality-crazed, mon-
archy-crushed, aristocracy -trampled, demagogue-swindled
world.

§ 6. BELIGIO-POLITXCAL AXIOMS.
Religion, however true or false it may, owing to man's
ignorance or knowledge, seem, must unavoidably be the
general social law to which all others must be referable and
—
subordinate the theory, to which human government must
be the practice. Religion is as necessary to, and inseparable
from the Social Organism*, as gravitation is necessary to,
and inseparable from, the Universe. Religion is, to social
law, what gravitation is to all law. Mystery revelation is
self-contradictory, self-evident absurdity. Materiality is
all-sufficient. Or, if it is not adequate to all the real, the .

intelligible demands of even the religions instinct, all the

j

knowable is failure, and all is the most pitiable inefficiency, j

unless nothing is the basis of all, and supernaturalism is j

alone true.
The significancy of " miracle " is development all beyond
;

which is delusion. Perfect and " eternal " happiness really

j

means the perfect and sufficiently lasting happiness which

 RELTGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 21

by science, art, and lower material aid, is producible. All

the human and lower material forces developed, harmonized,
modified, to their utmost capacity, and as advantageously
as possible combined, will realize Heaven on Earth ; any
shorter or lower aim than which can never reach nature's
mark.
The Church, though variously named, scandalized to the
lastdegree by the most abominable abuse, and seemingly
not only fractured, but even in the last stages of decay, is
founded as securely as is gravitation, and indivisibly and
irrepressibly includes all mankind. Collective man is a
State objectively and practically, and a Church subjectively
and theoretically and all opposition to this relationship can
;

but augment the evils charged to it, but which are wholly
owing to ignorance with respect to its law. The head of
the scientilic Church will be to the State what the Sun is to
—
the Solar System a liberty insuring hierarch.
The truth of religion admits of no extraneous evidence ;

actual and complete human freedom, or a rapidly increasing

tendency thereunto, alone can manifest it. AChurch in-
disputably infallible can be no other than a State through-
out which liberty is real, universal, and perfect, or self-
evidently and very rapidly becoming so.
The theory that all things came of nothing is treated with
respect by nearly all mankind. The theory that all man-
kind came from one stock, and that all the geological
changes which, the Earth presents have taken place within
the period of about six thousand years, is seriously enter-
tained by those claiming to be eminent in science and art, and
is listened to with patience even by those who dissent from it.

There has already been such enormous quantities of

nothing said on the nothing theory, that I shall add no
more nothing to it. But I hope those who believe in human
perfection through a power they call u God," and concern-
ing which, or whom, they confess that they know nothing,
will candidly listen to some of the arguments, and a very
few of the facts that I have glanced at and shall adduce
from a world full of them, to show that physical perfection
and human fulfillment is attainable through intelligible,
substantial means —through the only power that there can
be anything known, thought, or even imagined about, and
that man can, much better than he ever has done, direct,
and much more rapidly than he ever has done, accelerate
the process.
And will those who have written, or carefully read large
22 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

volumes going to show that the eoal -black, woolly-headed,

flat-nosed, blubber-lipped, retreating-foreheacled, long-heeled
Negro, the still further removed from the Caucasian race
Hottentot, and the scarce human Esquimaux, came, through
natural transformations, from the same stock as Washing-
ton and Auguste Comte, Mary "Wollstonecraft and the Em-
press Eugenia, as have also the myriads of children who
have died aged one hour, and the man who has lived one
hundred and sixty-nine years, give ear and brain to the
theory, which does not draw a whit more on the amount of
nature's modifiability, that development can be carried to
the extent of producing a variety of races [Darwin has
fully demonstrated that races are not immutable] of human
beings, all of whom shall be as beautiful, as healthy, and
every way as perfect, as angels are imagined to be and ;

that the earth is capable of being fitted up for the perfect

accommodation of such beings, and for their sustentation
in life ad libitum as to individuals, and eternal as a Social
Organism or Universal Man ? And in view of the con-
quests over obstacles to his ends that man has already
achieved, who that is endowed with any considerable
degree of intellectual generalization can doubt that man
will, with rapidly increasing speed, push perfection to its
goal ?
I will here remark, that the races, into which natural-
historians divide mankind, like the simple material elements
into which physicists resolve matter, are indispensable land-
marks in science and art, though it should never be lost
sight of that the former are not immutable, nor are the lat-
ter ultimate ; they are merely the analyses beyond which
science and art have not yet gone.
It is in evidence that human life, in spite of all the foes
that beset it, has increased in length even within the his-
toric period, as has also the human stature. One hundred
and seventy-two years have been achieved, and, in numerous
instances, one hundred to one hundred and twenty.
" Life," says Bichat, " is the aggregate of functions that
resist death." Of course, then, all that strengthens the
organs of these functions prolongs life, all that weakens
them and counteracts the instinctive efforts of the vis medi-
catrix naturce hastens death, and all that prevents the life
organs from any advantage that they are capable of profit-
ing by, transmits a weaker than necessary life-power, and a
proportionally shorter life to posterity, and vice versa. This
being the case, is it not downright stupidity to say that
 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 23

when all the foes to life are as far overcome as possible, life
will not be lengthened to any desirable extent ?
Care, vexation, ennui, and unsatisfied longing or passional
starvation, cause an incalculable amount of wear and tear of
the brain and nervous system.
The malarious effluvia that floats in the atmosphere, that
has, in many localities, been greatly reduced by human
means, attended with a corresponding lengthening of life,
and that is wholly removable, still causes, everyvihere^ an
immense wear and tear on all the organs of life, particularly
the liver, lungs, and, sympathetically, the heart
The death-power that lurks in the best food or drinks now
obtainable, except, in some rare instances^ water, wears out
the stomach and intestines fearfully in advance.
The ignorance that prevails with respect to ventilating
and heating houses, temples, theatres, lecture-rooms, and
public conveyances, actually gouges the lungs prematurely
to pieces.
If physiologists were not, like physicists, wholly absorbed
in scientific specialities how could they not perceive that
',

the ossification of the arteries that impedes the free circula-

tion of blood in the parts —
do. of the cartilages that dimin-
ishes the capillary system of the lungs and prevents sangui-
fication, can be retarded by diet and other means, as can
also the shrivelling and induration of the nervous system
—
which renders it unfit for innovation ? particularly after we
have learned more of the nature of life, which physiologists
are so assiduously striving to do ?
Sydenham admits that two-thirds of mankind die of
acute diseases, two-ninths of consumption, and one-ninth
from other chronic maladies, and from old age. How
strange it is that it did not occur to him that none of the
co-sharers of the morbidity that he admits all to have passed
the ordeal of, could possibly die of anything at all deserving
the name of old age. But few men of special science are
capable of drawing general conclusions.

§ 7. RELXGIO-POLITICAL THEOREMS.
— —
Nature all in man's connection all the humanly per-
ceptible, is spontaneously changing to an organism through-
out which complete harmony and all conceivable perfection
will reign. For her means are adequate to her ends ; she
has not, even through human thought, gone out of herself;
subjectivity cannot transcend objectivity.
 —
24 EELIGIO-POLITTCAL PHYSICS*

In the animal kingdom, nature lias attained to conscious-

ness man is her cerebrum, the lower animals her cerebel-
;

lum. All mind, thought, or will is, in the broadest or most

general sense, the mind, thought, or will, of en lire nature
of all which to man exists.
Specially considered, the mind, or soul, whether of man
or of lower animals, is the function of cerebral organism
positively and of all or any part of external and cognizable
',

nature, negatively,

§ 8. TRUE KELIGION THE SCIENCE OF SdEWCES.

—
Man's highest aspiration his religious instinct his —
fancied supernatural yearning, is the manifestation of
nature's self-tendency to that perfection which she is ela-
borating. All that man hopes for from "miracle," he will
substantially obtain through science, art, and lower mate-
rial development.
Instinctively, during savageism, barbarism, and civilism,
man fancifully abstracts his subjectivity, and as fancifully
creates it almighty ; and this anthropomorphize or " the-
ologic " phantasm foreshadows, and really signifies the
almightiness to which man will, objectively^ arrive. Triune
matter, motion,* and mind, h rapidly throwing off its mysti-
cal envelope —
the triune " Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
Man has already eliminated supernatural divinity from, and
manifested his own divinity in, a great portion of nature.
He is acknowledged lord of the materiality of which all is
composed, to the extent to which the air-balloon, the steam-
engine, the electro-magnetic telegraph, and their accom-
panying sciences and arts manifest and as soon as he tho-
;

—
roughly understands that he is God when God-incarnation
stands a known reality, instead of an inexplicable, sense-
confounding, malice-breeding, improvement-hindering u mys-
tery," God-man will rapidly direct all the force which pro-
duces evil, to the production of good; and (with a velocity
increasing as do numbers successively multiplied by their
own products) complete the process of making all existence
in his connection as conducive to his happiness as it was
inimical to it when human progress was at its lowest stage.
Development and art near completion —human and lower

Man the second person in the intelligible Tri-

* I have herein before called
nity, but lest this
should be considered a self-contradiction, I will remark, that
Man is the most important manifestation of nature's motion, and the exponent
of her dynamics.
 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 25

—
material perfection with a power of means increasing as
the speed with which the celestial spheroids, if thrown into
confusion, would gravitate to equilibrium. For the Social
Organism is as susceptible of order and freedom as that
planetary empire whose chief is the Sun has proved to be ;

and the Universal Organism harmonized to the extent that

it is self-capable of being, and thus self-enabled to bring all
its force to bear for good, will clear up the immortality
enigma, and solve the liberty problem.
Without the aid of miracle, but by human and lower
material means, all existence in the human connection will
be one grand laboratory of good; the Earth will be so
equally inhabitable as to form but an agreeable variety of
climate, from the equator to the poles, leaving no nook for
savageism, ignorance and superstition to skulk in ; and there
will be, between'desiring and having, only the intervention
of just exertion enough to give due value to possession and;

human life will be extended till all the varieties of happi-

ness presentable to the five senses exhaust their value by
repetition.
After making all possible allowance for the diversity of
temperature, which ocean and air currents cause, there
remains an approximation of the temperature of the warmest
days in winter to that of the coldest days in summer, and a
difference in the mean temperature (seven degrees in the
inland city of St. Louis) of whole years, utterly incom-
patible with the theory that the sun, or the inclination of
the earth's axis toward the plane of its equator, inducing
obliquity of radiation, cause what are vulgarly called "heat"
and " cold," to any excess that may not be reduced to per-
fect geniality by human means, acting in concert with
lower material ones.
Every one knows that some earthly bodies are self-lumi-
nous and it is in evidence that the planets do not borrow
;

all their light from the sun. The Aurora Borealis is very
significant of a powerful means whereby, when electrical,
thermal and luminous action are better understood, "light"
will be sufficiently extended to the earth's poles. The
extraordinary lightness of some whole nights in particular
places far removed from polar twilight (see Humboldt's
remarks thereon) is wholly unaccountable in the present
knowledge of the crepuscular theory, and shows conclusively
that luminosity may be generated to an extent not yet
dreamed of, in our atmosphere, or that the latter, being
modifiable ev"en spontaneously, so as to reflect brightness from
2
26 RELIGIOPOLITICAL PHYSICS.

the sun, to tlie extent that fine print can be read at mid-
night even near the equator, will prove sufficiently modifiable
for all human purposes.
Let any one with a capacity for drawing comprehensive
deductions, take into consideration the remarkable phe-
nomena noted by Dr. Kane during his Arctic Explorations,
and see if they do not immeasurably more sustain the
theory herein set forth, than they do the wretchedly barren
one, that the world is such an unfinished and unfinishable
piece of botchery, that it is a mere kennel to breed mutually
tormenting knaves and fools in, or "a fleeting show for
man's illusion given," in which to make some mystical pre-
parations for enjoying life in a world so utterly unintelli-
gible that we can know nothing at all about it! A
worfd
which, the God of this present one, in order to mend his
hand at creation, and not utterly disgrace himself in the esti-
mation of his creatures, has prepared for them to be happy
in, after they are dead !
The wide range north and south, which isothermal lines
take in their progress east and west, and which is as yet
only partially accounted for, is encouragingly significant.
The curves which these lines take in passing all the highest
polar latitudes yet reached by navigators, indicate the exist-
ence of a warmer clime in the open sea or vast plains at
the flattened poles.

§ 9. EIGHT GOVERNMENT THE AET OF ARTS.

for all desirable good can and must be
The conditions
produced. "Whatever aims to repress, instead of to satisfy,
the natural passions, is either folly, quackery, or fraud.
Civil law can no more be " enacted " than physical law can.
It must be discovered. Let that figment of the imagina-
tion—duty, and its horrid correlate— the evil-for-evil delu-
sion, be consigned to where science and art have doomed
so many less complicated barbarisms. Let moral govern-
ment, arrogant government, and caucus-and-baflot-box
government —
those abortive and Utopian experiments,
which are now self-evident failures, together with those
—
bewildering barrennesses metaphysics and skepticism, be
buried in the same grave with their long pince defunct
parent, supernaturalism and let man avail himself of
;

nature's ample resources, and go scientifically and artisti-

cally to work to make himself really good, perfectly happy,
in short, actually free. Let man set about the inauguration
 RELTGI0-P0L1TICAL PHYSICS. 27

of Heaven on Earth as dispassionately and determinedly,

arid in as combines labor, capital
good and real faith as lie
and skill to construct railroads, factories, and steamships,
and complete success will crown his efforts.

§ 10. HOW TRUE RELIGION AHD RIGHT GOVERNMENT

WILL COMMENCE TO BE ESTABLISHED.
In proportion as the clergy understand the gospel of
development, science and art, they will expand the budding
organs* of the human understanding, and rightly direct,
instead of mystery-confounding man's religious instinct. As
religion thus becomes emancipated from its primitive savage
and barbarous miracle-absurdity, and stands revealed the
science of sciences, government must necessarily correspond
to it, by changing from that abomination of abominations
now submitted to as "necessary evil" to the art of arts
whereby perfection will be realized.
Or, the present mockery of a clergy continue deaf to the
if
demands of the age, and blind to the highest interests both
of themselves and the rest of mankind (for I think I have
made it apparent that until all have their rights, no one can
have them), the hour is surely and rapidly approaching
when they will be displaced by a true priesthood, who will,
in temples far more splendid than any hitherto built, and as
much better furnished as the practical and sufficient is
preferable to the speculative and impossible as meaning is —
superior to balderdash, give mankind real, body-and mind-
satisfying truth, in place of bewildering, sense and-passion-
—
opposing fallacy the kernel, instead of the swine's fodder
of husks, with which they are now fed.
Half the money that Stephen Girard so vainly and blindly
devoted to indiscriminately opposing religion, would be
sufficient to found a church that would form the nucleus of
the universal one that will divest religion of savage mystery
and vindictiveness, and enable it to stand revealed the re-

* The clergy always have been, and a clergy necessarily must be, the real
governors of mankind. " Let me make the people's songs," said Napoleon I.,
u and I care not who make their laws." And it is to me perfectly astonish-
ing that the meanest capa.-ity docs not comprehend that emperors, kings, pre-
—
sidents, parliaments, Congresses, etc. etc., are but the subalterns the very tools
of those who make the people's cradle-hymns and Sunday-school catechisms :

that u infidels" do not perceive where their only remedy against superstition
lies, and that the miserable demagogues do not understand that so long as the
clergy stick to " Christ and him crucified," as they are so anxious to have them
do, they, the demagogues, will have to travel the same mean, contemptible,
hard, never safe, and usually fatal road they now do.
28 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

splendent combination of all science would be sufficient

;

to found and permanently establish as the foundation-stone

of the basis of the eternal well-being of the Social Organism,
a church, under the guidance of which, physical training
and object- teaching, adapted to the varying human capacities*
would displace mystery, metaphysics, moralism, in short,
vindictive, subjective teaching a church in which music,
;

painting, eloquence, poetry, sculpture —

all that can attract,
physically and mentally develop and socialize mankind all —
that can charm woman, enlist her mighty influence, emanci-
pate her, and render her, without exception, so adorable,
that love will be universally reciprocal between her and
commensurately developed man all that can amuse and
;

suitably instruct without boring the masses all that can

;

qualify for man's leaders those whom nature has formed for
—
such formed to be the Social Organism's head. church A
in which what is capable of producing all this all con-—
ceivable perfection — would be used instead of abused.
More than on anything else, human emancipation depends
on woman finding her right position in the Social Organism.
The time has already arrived for commencing the p>ractical
solution of this question. Progress waits on it. If man
exceeds woman in strength of body, and has a more sub-
stantial mental organization, she possesses an enchanting
physical loveliness, and a superiority with respect to certain
intellectual qualities, to which he is indebted for his most
vivid sensations of delight. This renders her to him, what
the blossoms and foliage of the tree are to the body and
roots thereof. Woman is more than man's equal, so sure as
the being that he spontaneously, really and necessarily',

adores, is above him and she will be far more than at

;

present, the object of man's adoration, when humanity is

perfected. Between unsophisticated lovers, the very acme
of delight is spontaneous adoration on the part of the man,
and the reception of it on that of the woman r and the 9

adored must be considered superior to the adorer, when ado-

ration is spontaneous, and delightfully accorded, rather than
when by man
ungallantly tells woman
that — "theextorted
it is fear.
beautiful could
If
not but for the substan-
exist,
tial," she can truly retort, and generally with an air that
will bow him ecstatic at her feet, " but the substantial
would soon wish itself out of existence were it not for the
beautiful." Woman's rights can never be secured by her
competing with man in his sphere. If he yields, she will be
only the pitiable recipient of charity. If he competes with.
 KELIGTu-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 29

all his force, lier rights will be far more brutally trampled
on than they now are.
Are not exceedingly beautiful women deified even now ?
and are not woman's rights very perceptibly more secure in
proportion to woman's physical and intellectual beauty? A
beautiful woman enters a crowded car. All the men rise,
as if magically operated upon, to give her a seat. A
rather
ugly one enters. If she is not so old as to excite pity, she
will stand some time before any one will offer her a chance
to sit down. Develop the physical, and the moral will take
care of itself. In the coquetry which shallow philosophers
and blindly stupid moralists sneer at, there is a most
important, and, in the economy of nature, a most valuable
reality.
Of course, the members of the true Church could neither be
hoaxed into voting —
into being the mere chess-men of politi-
cal gamblers, nor fooled into law-suits. They would settle
their own differences among themselves, or by an appeal to
their religio-governmental dignitaries, who would know that
their own interests were as inseparable from those of their
fellow-citizens, as the interests of the head are from those of
the body. They would avoid differences with the rest of
the world as much as possible, and in no emergency conde-
—
scend to enter their inextricably perplexing arena " law."
Pending the existence of laws against collecting debts (for
that is exactly what all laws ostensibly for collecting debts
amount to), they would stick as close to the cash system of
trade as possible.
As this practically good, and really free Church and
State organization enlarged its area and extended its opera-
tions, it would harmoniously regulate, instead of arbitrarily
governing, everything; agriculture, manufactures, com-
—
merce all. In architecture, man would have the advantage
of chemical and biological science with respect to ventila-
tion. In the matter of clothing, the tailor and dress-maker,
and especially their customers, would have the inestimable
advantage derivable from the knowledge of the physician.
The hygienic department would also see that grain was har-
vested and fruit gathered, and cookery done, immeasurably
more to the advantage of health and longevity than they
now are. Quack liberty ignores science in the social
economy, or else commits the equal folly of supposing that
every individual can master all science. The bogus consti-
tutional and sham legal freedom of the members of the body
politic to murder the whole community by poison, suffoca-
30 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

lion, strangulation,and a thousand other means, would be

wholly disallowed, to their own inestimable advantage.
"When the power of this freedom-dispensing hierarchy
arrived at the requisite point, all children born would have
the advantage of all the physical and intellectual culture
that the organization to which they belonged could give
them. They would be wholly at the charge of the State.
'No reason can be urged against this, that is not equally
valid against our present public schools, and no reason can
be given against an universal joint-stock equitable arrange-
ment of the interests of labor, skill, capital, and all human
concerns, that is not valid against public libraries, public
roads, the public defence, and, in short, against everything
that generally accommodates.
The first governmental public accommodation, was the
irrepressible movement toward a universal copartnership
that will really emancipate labor, sufficiently remunerate
skill, and perfectly secure capital; in short, enable individu-
als to exist in society as freely as the planets revolve in the
solar system ; so free, that between wishing and having
there will intervene but just exertion enough to give due
value to possession.
The founding of a church like the one above sketched
willbe the beginning of the end of anarchy, oppression, and
wrong. Superstition w ill thenceforth be rapidly curtailed,
r

and good, instead of evil, will as rapidly become spontane-

ous.
The first church that successfully commences this great
revolution, will be the nucleus of the Sun of the religio-
governmental system that will include the world itself, both
physical and human. It will include all mankind, and all
in the human connection all which acts on man, and is
:

therefore, positively or negatively, acted on by man.

The Cathedral that is in contemplation for Bishop Hughes,
or the mammoth meeting-house that is in prospect for the
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, backed by the wealth of a few
millionaires, and the official aid of the eminent men of sci-
ence and the artists that wait but a call from such a corpo-
ration, would probably be successful. At any rate, it would
be immeasurably more glorious to take the first step in this
enterprise that is perfectly sure to succeed eventually, though
it should, pro tempore, fail, than it would be to be Emperor
or President of the wT>rld, under present circumstances.
Oh, how pitiably contemptible the mightiest theologically
constituted inonarchs and demagogues will appenr, and how
 —
RELIGIO-POLITIC^L PHYSICS. 31

abominably the names of our most bunkum theo-democratic

politicians will stink, when man's good opinion is worth
—
having when what we now call man is man.
—
What powerful capitalists what influential clergymen
what eminent scientists and artists will take the lead in this
supremely magnificent revolution (this revolution of revo-
lutions, that will crown and fructify all former ones), and
thus gain inestimable satisfaction of inaugurating
the
Heaven on Earth, secure to their names the gloria in excelsis
of all future ages, and embalm their memories in the grate-
ful affections of Eternal Man f Of man, when his approba-
tion shall be an honor ; when he shall be as free, as happy,
as wise, and as perfect, as the author of "The Religion of
Science " thus prophetically pictures him :

" The scene of my vision now rapidly shifted from stage to stage of
development and progress, till it reached the thirtieth century ;<* the
substantial glory and magnificence of each succeeding stage, increasing
in the ratio (in which science and art within our own observation does)
of the multiplication of numbers by each succeeding product till, finally,
;

the ice in the Polar regions disappeared, the superfluous thermal activ-
ity in the Equatorial regions was suitably diminished, and luminous
action was sufficient everywhere. Sciences on Sciences and Arts on
Arts had, working with, or according to, nature, fully developed her,
liberated all her laws, and availed perfectly organized Man of the use of
all tier force most advantageously combined.
u The whole earth was cultivated in a manner far superior to that in
which any portion of it now is. Magnificent palaces, about six miles
apart, had displaced all the isolated abodes of jealousy, vexation, misery
and ennui. Children were no longer dreaded as a burden by either pa-
rent, and were hailed as precious and valuable acquisitions by the
State, which not only provided for their perfect development as mem-
bers of it, but honored and remunerated mothers for their bearing and
suckling, by an equivalent for the loss of time to which they were
thereby subjected. This remuneration did not consist in silver or gold
dollars — the coinage of barbarism nor in all but or quite worthless
;

shin-plasters — the currency of pseudo civilization; but in certificates of

value based on actual production; or, which amounted to the same
thing, in stock, by which nearly all property was represented. All
mankind composed one vast joint stock corporation.
" Prostitution, either for life, for a single night, or by the job, was of
course banished. Volcanoes were silenced, tempests were hushed, pes-
tilence and disease had ceased, and the earth's circulations were as
genial as were those of the perfectly healthy human body, which had at
last been realized.
u Nearly all labor was done by machinery. The balmy air was navi-
gated by gorgeous balloons. ]STo clothing, except for ornament, was
necessary, and none other was worn. The women, released by religio-
governmental science and art; and by enlightened public opinion, from
every inconvenience connected with free maternity, were all more en-

* Common Era.
 :

32 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

chantingly beautiful than the Houris with which even Asiatic imagina-
tion has furnished Mahomet's Paradise; they were very Goddesses,
revelling most voluptuously in the adoration which the equally faultless
men as voluptuously yielded them. Lovers (and all were such) freely,
spontaneously, and harmlessly luxuriated in each other's embraces.
" All were equally beautiful without being alike so that the only reason
;

for choosing one rather than another was the love of variety. The
great problem of the reciprocalness of love was solved, by all being so
faultless, both physically and mentally, that love was universally recip-
rocal. Restraint was banished, virtue was no more, and vice was obso-
lete.
u Throughout perceptible nature, all was perfection; desire was the
measure of fulfillment to will was to have, with the intervention of
;

just exertion enough to give due value to possession.

" Would that I could portray, somewhat in detail, the magnificence,
the luxury, the bliss, which resulted from the full triumph of the Re-
ligion and Government of Science. But our now paucity of objects of
comparison prevents me. Give your imaginations the reins, ye who
are most gifted in that respect stick to coherency, and you cannot go
;

astray though the most sanguine will fall very far short of the
;

glorious reality.
''
The following is the first Lesson of The Catechism, which I heard
the children (real flesh and blood angels) in a primary school reciting
u Question.
Wherein consists the value of all existence ?
" Answer. In happiness.
" Q. To what should all human endeavor, therefore, aim ?
"A. To the acquisition, perfection, and sufficient prolongation of hap-
piness.
" Q.How do you know that happiness is rightly the sole object
for which you should strive ?
"A. I feel it to be so. I cannot desire anything else. Besides, there
is nothing else worth aiming at, or even living for.
u
Q. Is it right for you to strive to promote only your own happi-
ness?
" A. It is.
" Q. How do you know it to be right ?
" A. From the fact that it is impossible for me voluntarily to strive
for anything else.
" Q. What guaranty have mankind always had, that perfect and suf-
ficiently lasting happiness as to the individual, and perfect and eternal
happiness as to the species, were attainable ?
u
A. Nature's; whose highest consciousness, and intelligence, man is.
The seed, the hope, the glimmering foreknowledge, of the great harvest
of happiness which we are now reaping, nature planted in man when,
through development, she first rough-created him and so deep, that it
;

never could be uprooted, but must necessarily have come, as it now

has, to full maturity, to complete verification, where, in virtue of
nature's law of laws, it must remain, as inexhaustible as the race of
man is eternal; as perpetual as is the equilibrium of the celestial sphe-
roids.
" Q. During the age of mystery, when man was in his primitive imper-
fection, in his physical and therefore intellectual heterogeneity what —
name did his bewildered imagination give to the object of his individual
existence ?

"A. Eternal happiness.

 —

RELXGIOPOLITTCAL PHYSICS. 83

^ Q. Wherein consisted his mistake?

" A. In not comprehending the Social Organism, or collective man
The Eternal Being to whom alone eternal happiness could be happiness ;
and in not knowing that temporal happiness could be made to last long
enough to be quite sufficient for the temporal beings which, through
nature's law of individual change, successively constitute eternal Hu-
manity.
" Q. How do you know that our present harvest of perfect happiness
is inexhaustible, and that our race is fixed in eternal happiness ?
" A. The laws of the intellectual world follow the rule of those of the
physical, on which they depend ; and the Social Organism is now as
harmoniously, and therefore as permanently, adjusted to all in its con-
— —
nection as is the solar system. Man's nature's spontaneous yearning
for satisfaction has, aided by all in the connection, produced in the world
of man, that necessarily eternal order which answers to the equilibrium
which gravitation has, thus aided, produced* in the planetary world.
The eternal happiness of collective man, and the perfect and sufficiently
lasting happiness of individual man are, therefore, as assured as is the
order of the celestial spheroids,
" Q. In what relation do you stand toward all mankind?
u A. All mankind, from the first inseparably, though for a long time
heterogeneously connected, are now, happily, a harmoniously organ-
ized whole of which I am a part, in as strict sympathy with all the
;

other parts, as the most minute tissues of my body are in sympathy with
all the rest of it.
" Q. It seems, then, that you cannot do an act which will promote
your own happiness, without simultaneously doing one which must pro-
mote the good of all mankind nor can you do an act fraught with evil
;

to others, which will not surely redound to your own hurt. Do you
comprehend all this ?
"A. As easily as I understand that my whole body shares the sensa-
tion of dissatisfaction caused by the prick of a needle on the end of my
little finger, or that of satisfaction, caused by the contact of my palate
with food or that of delight, caused by my eyes beholding, my ears
;

hearing, and my brains understanding, the pleasure which all around me

experience.
" Q. But though you are as really, you are not as closely connected
with the rest of mankind, as the parts of your body are with yourself.
How does the body politic immediately bring its all-sufficient power to-
bear in preventing wrong action ?
—
" A. By means of that body's nerves and brain its Scientific Dis-
coverers and Directors. By means of these, I acquire the aid of the
whole force of the body politic and of all else in the connection, and
am thus enabled to shape my actions in accordance with the social
organism's welfare, and simultaneously with the welfare of every part
of it, necessarily including myself. My functions, like those of the mass
of mankind, are special : those of a few, but naturally sufficient num-
ber, are general.
" Q. Are you and your compeers who compose the mass of mankind,
then, but mere blind followers of your superiors ?
u A. Blind? Our understandings, and particularly our
no indeed.
feelings, are constantly wide awake to the results which acting in
accordance with the directions of our social functionaries pro-
duces. For the rest, we have no superiors in any arbitrary sense of the
word.
2*
31 KELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS,

" Q. But what guaranty have you that your general function
aries will not misguide you, or shape your action for their own special
benefit ?
"A. They can no more be benefited by injuring us, than my indi-
vidual nerves and brain can be benefited by damaging my muscles;
and they know it. They know that our wretchedness would necessitate
their misery ; that the only difference between their woes and ours
would be that theirs would be gilded and ours but varnished. We, the
masses, have the same guaranty that our Scientific Discoverers and
Directors will not wrong us, that my hand has, that my nerves and brain
will not misdirect it into the fire.
" Here the first Lesson ended and music, instrumental and vocal,
;

incomparably more fairy-like than any I had ever yet heard, fell on the
charmed ear, and the rest of the session was spent in all that could
enliven instruction and render it attractive."

§ 11. BUSINESS PANICS.

But we want something immediately practical we want ;

manufacturers " going ahead," a " smashing trade " doing,

"confidence restored" to credit, money plenty, secession
quieted, and the negro-question settled right away, clamor
the short-sighted, impatient multitude.
To those who think their deepest when they talk thus, I
have said nothing, and shall say nothing respecting how
religio-go vera mental science and art will produce their per-
fectly satisfactory results. Not that I despise " The People,"
or entertain the slightest disrespect for their judgment, but
the contrary. I would not mock them. Their views are (in
accordance with nature's perfect economy) special; mine,
the powers that have constituted me have made general, or
more comprehensive. I honor the masses in their proper
sphere ; in the only sphere in which they have ever shown
capability to benefit themselves. Let them extend to me the
same civility, follow the prescription that I am, by the All
and in All, constituted to give, and judge by the result.
Have they not over and over tried all else sufficiently to
learn that they thereby only continue the doubly deceived
—
and betrayed dupes the mere tools of those miserable
demagogues who are making them supremely ridiculous,
and who, equally blind and self-duped, are leading the way,
deeper and deeper into the present social quagmire ? Have
"The People" not been long enough fooled by political
quacks, whose special applications change but do not cure —
whose soi-disant u practical measures " are but a miserable
series of delusive experiments that shift the diseased Social
Organism's position, only to make its maladies more and
more chronic and the cure more complicated ?
 ;

RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 35

Away with such temporizing, as fast as possible ; social

ills can no more be cured suddenly, than the most chronic
bodily ills can. The public can no more bound from its
present complication of the deepest seated and most chronic
social maladies into real prosperity, than some quack-pill
—
can instantaneously cure scrofula than an impatient novice
can jump into Greek, Latin, Arithmetic, etc., etc., without
first learning the alphabet and the figures.

§ 12. WAGES-SLAVERY AND CHATTEL-SLAVERY.

The American Ship of State is in the very breakers of
dissolution. The bar on which she is splitting, is the fol-
lowing clause in u The Constitution."* " No person held to
service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escap-
ing into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regu-
lation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but
shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such
service or labor may be due."
I trust that those to whom I have been appealing have
become convinced of the transitory and at best provisional
nature of all hitherto religion, law, governments, and even
constitutions that " The Constitution" was but the highest
;

step in progress that America could attain to seventy-three

years ago ; that if it was for all future ages, science, art,
and all improvements, are fallacies that the time is surely
;

approaching w hen no one will " owe service or labor," either

T

as a chattel-slave or wages-slave; or shall serve a less

august master than the real, the substantial, the intelligible
Almighty nor shall work at all except on conditions dic-
;

tated by himself; conditions that will secure to himself per-

fect and sufficiently lasting happiness.
I have herein-before advocated the licensing and provi-
sionally regulating of all evil, until it can be done away with
we should thus never for a moment have lost sight of the
important fact, that society at large is the principal party to
all evil or " crime" and the commonest capacity will be
able to perceive that all government hitherto constituted is
but licensed, somewhat regulated, wholesale brigandage, at

* They whoare breaking up " the Union," equally with those who are try-
ing to hold together, claim to act in accordance with that altogether too
it

accommodating political weathercock, " The Constitution, " and profess the
most patriotic and unwavering devotion to that immaculate indefinitencss.
How much longer shall mankind be mocked and betrayed by governments
founded on mystery, transcendentalism, metaphysics, subjectism in short,
;

unintelligibility ?
36 EKLrGIO-POLITTCAX PHYSICS.

length so ripe for destruction, that it ought to give way, as

fast as possible, to a religio-governmental system, founded
on science and art.
Let this doctrine be preached and practiced, and let the
perfection point he constantly in view, and evil will give
way through a system of gradual, but faster and faster
reduction, and those most abominable of all quack methods,
cauterization or excision— punishment and bloody and devas-
tating revolution, will never more be applied.
There is no class of southern slaves, the average length
of whose lives is not much greater than is that of the lives
of the sewing girls, and many classes of laborers and me-
chanics at the North, although the Caucasian race is natu-
rally longer lived than the African race, and has the
advantage of a more congenial climate.
Licensing the African slave-trade, instead of vainly try-
ing to prevent it, would, long ago, have rendered the human
chattel system unprofitable throughout all this land, the fer-
tility of which is not, like that of Egypt, recuperable through
the overflowing of rivers ; and immediately have given
whole States like Missouri, and particularly Virginia, the
advantage of a system of human slavery much worse for the
sufferers, but which must, nevertheless, be the connecting
link between chattel-slavery and an equitable adjustment of
the claims of labor, skill, and capital. For the advocates
of wages-slavery boast, in effect, that the deceitful, fraudu-
lent emancipation they contend for, extorts twice as much
unrequited toil as does honestly acknowledged, undisguised
slavery. And that it extorts four or five times the ingenuity,
or brain-labor, that direct slavery does, and is proportion-
ally more productive, is amply proven by the fact that
northern man-owners are much more wealthy than are
southern ones. Keep it in mind, that man's labor con-
stitutes all of value in man, that either northerners or
southerners own.
Licensing the slave-trade would have put a great damper
on Caucasian and African amalgamation, that fruitful
source of insurrection, and would rapidly have abolished the
breeding of chattel-slaves in some States to supply a market
in others, and the accompanying cruelty of separating chil-
dren from chattel-slave parents much more sensitive than are
wild Africans. I say chattel-slave parents, that the reader
may not forget that wages-slavery also most heart-rendingly
separates parents from children, and wives from husbands,
and as often, too, probably, as does chattel-slavery. I have
 —
RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 37

spent a year amidst " the institution " of the South, and
must confess that my feelings were never more wounded
there, by the sight of family separations at the auction-block,
than they have been often and again at the steamboat land-
ings in New York, when emigrants from the east were, ly
necessity as stem as the last blow of an auctioneer's hammer,
compelled to separate, parents from children, brothers and
sisters from each other, and wives from husbands, amidst
sobs as audible and sighs as deep as any I had ever heard
in or about the " slave-pens."
But the great difficulty is the way of licensing African
importation was the opposition of the government of Eng-
land and, apropos oi its objecting to slavery in any form,
;

unless it directs its attention with respect to it straight home-

ward, the reader is requested to turn these leaves backward,
and read a note on page 7.
The white slave-owners of England and our northern
States pay a round license for their most artfully disguised
piracy^ that supports alms-houses wherein more human
woe exists than would, in all probability, on board regulated
slave-ships. Eead Oliver Twist, and visit our " poor-houses,"
and form your judgments in the case.
If it can be shown that Protestantism is the height of religi-
ous reform, that human liberation can never proceed beyond
I infidelity," demagoguocracy, and wages-slavery, let such
names as Huss, Luther, Eousseau, Paine, Washington,
Lafayette^ Fourier, and Aoguste Comte, be consigned to
eternal infamy, and let all emancipationists be suppressed as
—
miscreants who are wantonly disturbing well, I had like to
have said the peace!
But if, on the contrary, it has been, (as I claim it has by
myself, aided by those who have studied this vast subject
before me,) shown that perfect human liberation is prac-
tical, then, every clause in " The Constitution," and every
"enacted" law has got to succumb to the fate that has
already befell so many kindred barbarisms ; and it is as use-
less to contend against this, as it would be to make decrees to
stop gravitation.
In view of this let us go lovingly, calmly, scientifically, and
artistically to work to displace evil by good, and we shall,
more and more rapidly, and, at last, with a suddenness and
ease that will make every one wonder why it had not been
done ages before, establish Heaven on Earth.
To talk about its being wrong for man to own property in
—
man, is the most drivelling twaddle the most short-sighted
38 RELIGIOPi -LITICAL PHYSICS.

imbecility. Man never owned any other property and nevei

can. Is the negro, or his labor, that which constitutes all
the value of ownership ? Evidently, the white laborer of
the North and the black laborer of the South are equally
owned the latter, by a master who has an immediate
;

interest in providing for his grosser necessities, the former by

a master w ho has not even that poor incentive in his favor.
r

Tlie whole question evidently is, to make man's property in

man mutually and universally beneficent.
If our southern States shall be so tyrannized over by a
wretched mob, led on by bankrupt demagogues, and disap-
pointed and therefore desperate politicians, as to dissolve
the Union, cha'ttel-slavery will come to the same crisis that
wages-slavery is in the throes of in continental Europe, is
on the very eve of in England, and is fast verging to in our
northern States ; not to cure, but only to render the horrible
disease more chronic, and the cure more complicated.
But machinery is fast bringing to a final crisis both
wages-slavery and chattel-slavery, as is manifest by the vast
amount of human muscle it throws into armies, filibustering
expeditions, alms-houses, and itinerant mendicancy ; and
by the multitudes of females it is plunging into the maelstrom
of prostitution.
I know, indeed, that political economists deceive them-
selves and their readers into the idea that machinery w orks T

as well for the poor as for the rich, by making the neces-
saries of life more accessible ; but the more and more rapid
growth of the abominations I have just alluded to, flatly
belies their theory. With the exception of those who are
employed in making and tending machinery, what but loss
and ruin does the laborer derive from it ? Take the num-
ber of the unemployed, including paupers, and of the
employed, and average the amount of their labor. Retrace
history one hundred years, or even fifty, and do the same;
and see if the average muscle-power exerted now, pro-
duces anything like the amount of human comforts it did
then.
And they who do not calculate that machinery will, before
long, make the power of even chattel-enslaved muscle
unprofitable even in the bottom-lands of America, are very
It would not be stranger than w as the
T
blind, or else I am.
discovery of the electro-magnetic telegraph and the sewing-
machine, if some cute Yankee should do that identical thing
some clear morning before breakfast.
"Well, even in that ease," methinks I hear too many;
 EELTGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 39

Patriarchs exclaim, " we sliall want our negroes for waiters

and body-servants." Nay, gentlemen, the attainment of the
stage in progress just alluded to, will necessitate a recon-
struction of society so thorough, that, if you have never
studied the subject before, were I to describe it, you would
think yourselves reading a new chapter in the " Arabian
Nigte*" instead of a strictly scientific, though prospective
portrayal.
Gentlemen, the isolated abodes of false selfishness,
jealousy, ennui, discontent ; in short, misery, both North and
south, will, at the stage of progress just alluded to, rapidly
give place to palaces of delight, as magnificent as imagina-
tion can paint ; in wT hich, breakfasts, dinners, suppers, lodg-
ings, clean linen, and elegant apparel, will, without either
slaves or servants, be furnished, unattended by the blows,
scolding, and disappointment that now accompany our pre-
sent wretched mockery of both comforts and pleasures. -

And what is to be done with this great question of

machinery against muscle ? Is it not high time to have
done with blinking it ? To what point in beggary and star-
vation do those who, as capitalists and discoverers or
" inventors" own machinery, expect that they who make
and tend it will, even as quietly as they now do, reduce
themselves %

The unemployed muscle of Europe is now in imminent

battle-array, and the clouds that hang so ominously over
our own political horizon, are, in sober fact, charged with
the thunder of the labor question, that can never be settled
short of an adjustment that wT ill give all a share in
what little labor will need to be done, and an equitable
amount of the profits which such labor, in connection with
the skill and capital that it will make profitable, will pro-
duce.
If the strife between the money-barons and their serfs ever
comes to blows in good earnest, the battle will be far
bloodier than was that between the feudal barons and their
serfs. But no. Continental Europe is not going to be given
up to red republicanism, England to levelling chartism, our
northern States to starvation's saturnalia, nor our southern
States to Africanization. Nineteenth century advancement
has vetoed all this. Besides, Europe, and particularly
France, will never forget the crushing she had under the
wheels of the car of equality during the Revolution of
1789 the pitiless crushings of the wheels of that dread car
;

have, through modern European history, exerted a salutary

40 RKLIG-IO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

.influence in our northern States, and the massacres of Hayti

will still and healthfully warn our southern
significantly
brethren, some ugly looking appearances to the contrary
notwithstanding.
That the Negro race, and all inferior races will run out,
is at length demonstrated. In fact, the Caucasian race
itself will be completely transformed. The succeeding
transcendently superior races of human beings will be pre-
cisely all that the most lively coherent imagination can
desire :and different from, without being, in the main,
inferior to each other.
In order to prevent a violent crisis of wages-slavery, and
gradually and peaceably end that abomination, there must
be adopted measures as different from alms-giving, as pro-
ductive industry is different from industrious mendicancy;
soup-committees, alms-houses, and street-charities but aug-
ment the evil they so blindly try to cure.
And in order that chattel-slavery may die out peaceably,
the States wherein it exists must turn, their attention, not to
the prevention and reclamation of runaways, but to the
best method of getting seasonably, quietly and effectually
rid of their discontented slaves, especially if they happen
to be mulattoes.
Mulattoes are as much more than half Caucasian, as the
Caucasian blood is superior to that of the African and to;

argue that they can be enslaved, either by the lash-smart

or the starvation-spur, either individually or nationally,
without danger, is to ignore the battle of Bunker Hill, and
deny that there ever was such a thing as rebellion, signalized
by carnage and devastation.
Where the African race has been crossed by the Cau-
casian, slavery, of whatever kind, is evidently most degrad-
ing to the latter and they who think that white blood can
;

be enslaved without danger of insurrection, by mingling it

with black blood, have simply studied natural history back-
ward, provided that they ever examined the subject at all,
except with the eyes of that narrow, gross, false self-regard,
that is the sure precursor of self-destruction.
During ten years past, the slave-rendition clause in " The
Constitution" has been enforced only in "that mock-sense in
which "the Sabbath" has been kept sacred by the noisy
disturbance necessary to a police descent on social and
peaceable dancers, theatre-goers and actors, and lager beer
tasters. It is safe to calculate —
in fact, the advocates of the
eternal fulfillment of the slave clause acknowledge —
that
 —
RELTGI0-P0L1TICAL PHYSICS. 41

every slave returned in accordance with it, has cost his

owner, on the average, three times his value, and the
government from five to ten times that amount; ignoring,
for the sake of the main argument, how much
less than
nothing all slaves who, of their own accord run awav, are
really worth.
If some practical disposition was made of the rendition
-

clause in " The Constitution," a contract, providing for the

#

rendition of those, whether white or black, who were

fugitives from States where they had been stirring up, or
trying to stir up, insurrection, could unquestionably be
rigidly enforced, as long as there would be any occasion
for
so doing. Come, brothers, let's not take leave of our
rationality; for 'twill be as vain and unprofitable to break
limbs, scatter brains, and let out bowels over this affair,
as it
was for Paddy to insist thatJiie captain who had agreed to
[' take him over the sa " should " stick to his
bargain," even
if the ship did sink.
Nothing is plainer, than that, throughout nature, the
weaker must succumb to the stronger and this necessarily
;

involves neither tyranny, oppression, nor injustice, but the

very reverse. What could be more oppressive, tyrannical
or unjust, than for the inferior to rule, or even be admitted
to equality (if such a scheme can be even imagined in
practice) with the superior? Under such a regime, how
long would it be before all that was either beautiful or utile
in nature would be extinguished, and this prospectively fair
world of ours be reduced to a disgusting muck heap ?
Until we look to entire reorganization in religion and
government, every sect and party will, and with truth,
scornfully toss at every other one the barren truism we are
no worse than you are; and the advocates of chattel owner-
ship of human beings, and those of the wages ownership of
them, will continue, and with equal justice and spite, to
hurl the slavery epithet into each other's faces,
j.
Brothers of the human race, East, West, North, and
South, let us lay aside passion, enmity, and spite, and bring
to our rescue all the wisdom, science, and art that we pos-
sess. For only by means of these, and the aid of our com-
mon Father and God— Material Nature— can evil be dis-
placed by good.
When the Roman Catholic phase of supernaturalism was
breaking up, those in authority perpetrated deeds which all
remember with horror, and which constructive revolution-
ists and comprehensive thinkers look back on with humili-
42 BELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

ation, regret, near akin to shame that they belong

and pity,
to the human race. Now
that supernaturalism itself is
breaking np, let those in power, especially in the " Model
Republic," take warning by the past, and not commit deeds
that will consign them to the agonies of remorse, unless they
are, considering the age in which they live, unpardonably
ignorant, and send their names to posterity coupled with
such execrations as are heaped on those of the infernally
Holy Inquisitors and their governmental abettors, most of
whom unquestionably were, however, far more sincere and
conscientious than any human tormentors can now claim to
be.

§ 13. PENAL CODES THEIR OWN NEMESIS.

Throughout the whole domain of science, nothing can be
more certain, than that the amount of criminality justly
chargeable to an individual, cannot exceed the proportion
which such individual's power bears to the power of the
whole human race. Therefore penal statutes are as consum-
mate quackery as a continual application of the scalpel's
edge to the external manifestations of small pox, in order
to effect a cure, would be.
What charge the iniquity of all mankind to a single
!

individual, and, with a force of a thousand millions against

one, murder an unresisting prisoner in cool blood? JDelibe
rately, and with assassinous intent, twist a rough hemp cord
around the tender neck of a defenceless human victim, till
the joints are dislocated, the eye-balls forced from their
sockets, the tongue squeezed horribly from the mouth,
the facial veins burst, and death, as if in pity, ends the
agony ?
And, sometimes (unless 'tis an infernal dream), "man,"(?)
armed, and regularly commissioned by the power and
authority of the whole State, draws the murderous halter
around the fair neck of "WOMAN Is " Earth," !

really, Hell ? Are " human beings," in truth, Devil-incar-

nations ?

In deliberately u punishing crime," society commits an

act that degrades man far below beasts none of whom
;

inflict death, or any lesser evil, without the plea of necessity,

instinct, passion, or accident. But it will not be long before
science will transcend that erring mountebank, reason, in
the government of mankind.
But I am not going to minutely examine and expose the
fallacy of " punishing " " crime." That would require a large
 "

RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 43

volume. I mean to thrust straight home to the very heart

of this abomination to show in a very few words, that the
;

blindly malicious and stupid advocates of u punishment

defeat their own professed aims that all penalties, in ad-
;

dition to those which necessarily follow a breach of real

law, augment the very evils they are applied to cure, and
in an exact ratio, other things being equal, to their severity.
The death-penalty always elevates the sufferer thereof to
a hero; generally to a saint; and often to a martyr. As
to its preventive effects Treason involves this penalty
: yet ;

our " Model Republic " was spawned of treason, and several
of the States w hich compose it are now in the midst of the
T

very saturnalia of treason, if we are to take for their repre-

sentatives those whom popular rule lias de facto constituted
such.*
" Hang the demagogues who are now preaching treason,
and every mobocrat they head," say the short-sighted
friends of our miserable apology for " law and order," in the
very face and eyes of the wholesale failure of their favorite
scheme.
Nay, sirs, let's have no more hanging. If you must have
some revenge on those who have immediately disturbed that
chronic armistice that the world calls peace ! for the last few
weeks, f who have thus damaged the public prosperity to
the amount, to speak within bounds, of more than it w ould T

cost to build the Pacific railroad, and created a riot that will
not probably end without murder, let me propose a substi-
tute for the hanging or even imprisoning scheme, and let
this be the last vestige of punishment that man can inflict on
his fellow man. Only in that hope would I propose it. The
horrible side of the punishment enormity has long and ably
been held up. I will try what exposing its absurdity can
effect.
Let the order-abiding portion of the community, if they
must have some revengeful " satisfaction " for past offences,
" enact " a " law " (and let this be the last " law " ever

* government, the real agent of the people, never existed. When those
A
whom the caucus and ballot-box scheme declares the people's agents happen
to be honest, when they refuse to accept the bribe of a clique or an individual
to pass this or that law, or pursue this or that measure, it is a mere mutter of
generosity — a sort of imperially exercised grace. Let any one watch the
lobby during a session of the Legislature or, if he could, get access to the
;

private conferences which our Presidents, Governors, Mayors, and " elected"
Judges hold, and see who the real governors of all Democracies and Republics
are.

f This was written January 8, 1861.

44 EELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

"enacted") that all demagogues whose machinations have

disturbed the usual tranquillity, or who shall have willfully
originated, or in any way assisted, schemes whereby the
public have been, either swindled or hoaxed, under pretext,
of government, and such of the mob who have maliciously
followed them as can be caught, together with all who have
voluntarily aided or abetted them, either openly or surrep-
titiously, directly or indirectly, shall be publicly turned butt
end upward over some official knee, and, after a prayer by
some devout clergyman, have their bare posteriors solemnly
spanked by the hands of the common hangman.
This would not be a martyrdom that any one would be
proud of having suffered, and it would be a perfect damper,
to all heroism in the case. Not even the sword and epaulets
of a cavalier whose seat of honor had, in accordance with
" law and order," been publicly hand-slapped, would cause
a lady's hand to wave, or her heart to sigh.
And would any demagogue who had, with all the for-
malities of "law" and " religion," had his bare butt-end
publicly spanked, ever " stump it " afterward % Could the
gravity of any audience stand the sight of the face of an
orator who had compulsorily, yet legally, appeared before
them with his breech uppermost, and with that most comical
substitute for his gammon-laboratory respectfully uncovered ?
"Would not the reminiscences that would spontaneously
arise, cause irrepressible laughter to drown the most bunkum
eloquence ?

The law here recommended is lesa brutal and shameful

than the one we now have, by the vast difference between
breaking men's necks and a moderate application of the open
hand to a rather insensible part. And I earnestly ask all who
are capable of judging in the case, if they do not candidly
believe that if these spanked political burglars, swindlers,
thieves, or humbugs, resorted to the pen, instead of to the
rostrum or stump, they, and all aspirants for public office,
would take better care than they ever have done that their
schemes in behalf of the sovereignty of the dear people,
and forenlarging the area of freedom, should not be
treacheries gotten up to serve their own mean, narrow, mis-
taken interests, well knowing that if they brought disaster
on the country, they would, as some slight compensation,
have to furnish it with laughing-stocks and butts for
ridicule ?
I most earnestly invite our honorable judges, particularly
our chief justices, our worthy President of the United j
 KELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS. 45

States, and equally worthy Mayor of New York, together

with some of our most prominent members of Congress and
of the Common Council of our city aforesaid, to consider
the feasibility, and contemplate the effect, of trying the
experiment of such a " law " as I have proposed, on several
hundred of the most infernal " scoundrels " in this country.
Don't let me be thought joking. I solemnly protest that
I never was more serious in my life than! am, in declaring
that it is my unshakable conviction, that if even common
murderers, brigands, and thieves were treated with that
mild barbarity I have just pleaded for in behalf of wholesale
" criminals," murderers would be less common than now,
meaner criminals would decrease, and those who still per-
sisted would be far less dangerous to society than they are
after being goaded to desperation by a few years' torture in
our infernal prisons.
Away with punishment altogether. It's a disgrace to
countries as barbarous as Algiers or Dahomey. Tiie most
benighted tribe in Africa has nothing more savage. 'Tis
a legacy we inherited from savagism itself, and society
becomes ashamed of it, and drops its practice exactly in
proportion as man becomes refined. The last relic of it will
cease, when man is perfected.
Let the great, but most simple truth, that no breach of
real law ever did or ever can avoid its due penalty, that
the interests of the human race are inseparably connected,
and that nature will, through science, art, and lower material
development, prove all-sufficient, be erected into a creed,
taught in Sunday-schools, and made universally public, and
let consistent action be taken thereon, and all transgression,
from the meanest to that of even national magnificence,
will soon cease.
Needs there any argument or demonstration to prove
that inflicting evil on evil only augments evil? Surely
nothing can be more absurd and ridiculous than revenge.
The true cause of " crime," or " moral evil," is, that
creation is incomplete. The parts of the Universal Organ-
ism, or all which to, in and through man exists, have got to
be adjusted so that they will not clash; so that they will
not chafe, even and man has got to do this. He has got
;

to finish creation —to set it in order, before he can be

accommodated therein. For he is the sensible head of all
in his connection. His is the highest intelligible intelli-
gence. The instant we talk about mind abstracted from its
material organs, our words have clean parted company
46 RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS.

with meaning, and we find ourselves sinking deeper and

deeper into the bottomless depths of nonsense.*
It the wheels, and springs and cranks of a cutlery manu-
factory should clash, and chafe, and injure each other, what
epithet, but that of fool, or madman, would be applied to
those who had charge of it, should they fly into a passion,
expel some, and bend and break others, invader to make
them work right ? Or, if the faultiness wastry bad, treat
the whole building to volleys of musketry and broadsides of
cannon, in order to mend matters? Would not such over-
seers be considered only fit to tenant a madhouse ? Well,
far worse fools and madmen are the penal law-givers who
have charge of that embodiment of all the complications of
—
mechanism the Social Organism. The conditions for good
must be provided, before good can result, equally in the case
of man, or in that of coarser materiality. And all attempts
to promote well-doing, except according to this rule, are
folly or quackery, and must result, as they always have
done, in failure, or worse calamity.
" Evil," or " crime," will wholly cease, only when the .

whole human race form one Social Organism, governed by

those scientific enough to know that any malpractice on
their part, will be suicidal, and so perfectly fitted to the
Universal Organism, or all in man's connection, as to con-
trol it to the extent that to desire will be to have, with the
exception (if it can truly be called an exception) of just
exertion enough to give due value to possession, and that
individual conscious existence will continue till all the
varieties of happiness presentable to the five senses, exhaust
their value by repetition.
Leaders of mankind, your true function is to organize all
this ; and when you set yourselves about it dispassionately,
scientifically, and in a w orkmanly manner, you will realize
r

Heaven on Earth so suddenly, that the only wonder will be

that it had not been done before.

* The beautiful and regular pictures of shrubbery which the crystallization I

of frost forms on the sidewalk after a sudden thaw, is sufficient, in the case
of such as have understandings more comprehensive than are those of the
masses, to nullify all the arguments that can be adduced to prove "the
existence of the supernatural designer," about whom the apostles of mystery
and balderdash have so long astounded their hearers, whilst picking their
pockets.

THE END.
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the Theological Epoch, the
Metaphysical Epoch, and the Positive Epoch the first of these em- —
bracing Fetishism, Polytheism, and Monotheism." Sir David Brewster. —
The Essence of Christianity. By Ludwig Feuerbach.
Translated from the second German edition, by Marian Evans.
Large 12mo. $1 50.
This is the most powerful materialistic work ever written. It is the
—
natural history of supernaturalism the key to the cypher of the theolo-
gical enigma; a complete demolisher of all metaphysical or transcendental
theories. Feuerbach's masterly explanation of the religious idea, makes
his work, like the writings of Comte and Fourier, indispensable to prac-
tical social artists, to all who would know how to eliminate superstition.
The yearning of man after something which he supposes to be only
super naturally attainable, is an earnest of natural success of the perfec- ;

tion to which through natural science, art, and development, he will

arrive. This is in accordance with Fourier's great axiom, that "attrac-
tions are proportioned to destinies." Man has his God in himself; he is
a progressive being; the true meaning of miracle is development;
through which, man will be substantially the Almighty which he creates
his abstract subjectivity. For man cannot look beyond nature, and yet
he does look to perfection.

The Social Destiny of Man; or, Theory of the Four

Movements. By Charles Fourier. 8vo., pp. 422, with Portrait.
$1 50 in cloth, $1 ia paper covers.
Demonstrates the feasibility of an arrangement between labor, capital
and skill, which shall make capital perfectly secure, and immeasurably
more valuable than now which shall make skill operate for, instead of
;

against labor, and at the same time fully secure its own interests which ;

shall give constant employment and ample remuneration to labor which ;

shall banish pauperism and " crime," regulate the sexual relations so as
to satisfy instead of repressing the natural passions, and put an end to
prostitution, wife and husband poisoning, seduction, and even mental
adultery

tMJRTmEiMMJBMlTr MOOI£S. :

"All Nature is but Art less understood.'* —Pope.

The Religion of Science ; or, The Art of Actualizing Li-
berty, and of Perfecting, and Prolonging Happiness
Sufficiently
Being a Practical Answer to the Great Question " If you take — :

away my Religion, what will you give me in its stead V 12mo. 87c.
The Essence of Science ; or, The Catechism of Positive So*
ciolo<ry and Physical Mentality. 12mo. 60c. and 37c.
The New Crisis; or, Our Deliverance from Priestly Fraud.
Political Charlatanry and Popular Despotism. 13c.
 — ;

LIBERAL BOOKS. 3

Hell on Earth! Murder, Rape, Robbery, Swindling and

Forgery Covertly Organized. Cannibalism made Dainty An Ex- !

posure of the Infernal Machinations and Horrible Atrocities of

Whited Sepulcherism together with A Sure Plan for its Speedy
;

Overthrow. 18c.

The Life of Thomas Paine, Mover of the " Declaration of

Independence Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the first Ameri-
;"

can Congress ; Member of the National Convention of France ;

Author of " Common Sense," "The Crisis," "Rights of Man," "Age
of Reason," etc.: THE MAN, whose motto was " The World is my
Country ; to do good, my Religion." Embracing Practical Consider-
ations on Human Mights ; demonstrating that Man tends irrepressi-
bly to Actual Freedom ; and showing A
Liberty-Aim Connection in
the action of the World's Three Great Author-Heroes Rousseau,
Paine, and Comte. By the Author of "The Religion of Science."
With elegantly engraved Portraits of Rousseau, Paine, and Comte.
12mo cloth. 50c.
,

The five preceding works are all by the same author. He takes the
ground that "Free Government can be nothing less than the Art of
Arts, to which True Religion must be its corresponding Science of Sci-
ences; and they who preach liberty from any other stand-point, are
either circumscribed, weak, deluded, or so abominably corrupt, and so
blind to true self-interest, as to mean spoils;" that "nature is all-suffi-
cient ;" that therefore, u through science, art, and spontaneous develop-
ment, the highest theories will prove to be practicabilities." For u subjec-
tivity cannot transcend objectivity ideas are not innate, or supersensuous
;

mind, will, desire, are functional of material organism, and cannot,

therefore, wander beyond nature. Man is the highest organism he is ;

nature's head; his will, therefore, really is nature s will ; and nature's
]

will must be the measure of her power and of her resources, and these
must be adequate to the realization of the highest conceivable bliss and ;

the religious instinct which mentally distinguishes man from lowT er ani-
mals, is the index which points to the goal of development —
to complete
creation. The human race, therefore, w ill achieve on earth the perfec-
r

tion of happiness which man now mistakenly looks for after death.
Men and women will be as beautiful and every way as perfect as " angels "
are imagined to be and life will, by natural means, be so lengthened
;

that perfect happiness will last till all the varieties of it which can be
presented to the five senses exhaust their value by repetition. "Heaven,"
and " eternal happiness " are but glimmering, distance-dimmed views of
the veritable u Paradise" which science, art, and spontaneous develop-
ment will secure toman in this substantial sphere."
No other writer has so clearly shown how to eliminate theology, and
its loathsome train of moral, political and social evils.

The Creed of Christendom : Its Foundations and Super-

structure. By William Rathbone Greg. $1 25.
" No candid reader of the Creed of Christendom can close the book
' '

without the secret acknowledgment that it is a model of honest investi-

gation and clear exposition that it is conceived in the true spirit of
;

serious and faithful research; and that whatever the author wants of
 —
—
4 LIBERAL BOOKe

being an ecclesiastical Christian, is plainly not essential to the noble

guidance of life, and the devout earnestness of the affections." Went- —
minster Review.
The Doctrine of Inspiration: Being an Inquiry concern-
ing the Infallibility, Inspiration and Authority of Holy Writ. By
the Rev. John Macnaught, M.A. Oxon., Incumbent of St. Chrysos-
tora's Church, Everton, Liverpool. 12mo. $1 37.
"This work is more significant than any which has appeared since the
advent of Strauss' Life of Jesus.' The vulgar idea of the supernatural
c

inspiration of the Bible is here abandoned and what is more, it is

;

shown that many of the chief dignitaries, including four bishops of the
Church of England, have held, on the sly, similar opinions. The citadel
of Christian superstition may now be considered as authoritatively sur-
rendered.
" It is the first book written by an orthodox clergyman which deci-
dedly denies the doctrine of Scriptural infallibility. It is well written
and manly." Christian Inquirer [Unitarian].
What is Truth? or, Revelation its own Nemesis. 12mo. $1.
"
The writer of these letters, in reply to the everlasting enigma, leaves
not one stone upon another of the Christian temple he rests not until
;

he has created for himself a new heaven and a new earth, until he can
kneel down a solitary worshipper at the shrine of justice.
" We would especially recommend these letters to the more calm, but
not less convinced author of 'Miracles and Science,' as they contain the
strongest and most searching objections to which the orthodox scheme
is exposed." Leader.
New Researches on Ancient History : Embracing an
Examination of the History of the Jews until the Captivity of Ba-
bylon ;and showing* the origin of the Mosaic Legends concerning
the Creation, Fall of Man, Flood and Confusion of Languages. By
C. F. Volney, Count and Peer of France Author of " The Kuins,
;

or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires," etc., etc. Hand-

some 12mo., muslin. $1 25.
Volney's Ruins ; or, Meditations on the Eevolutions of Em-
pires. To which is added " The Law of Nature," " The Contro-
versy between Dr. Priestley and Volney," and a Biographical Notice.
50c. in cloth, 30c. in paper covers.
Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights
OF WOMAN, with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects.
With a Biographical Sketch of the Author. One beautiful volume,
12mo. 75c.
Vestiges of Civilization ; or, The JEtiology of History,
Religious, JEsthetical, Political, and Philosophical. 12mo. $1 25.
History of Priestcraft in all Ages and Nations.
By William Howitt. 12mo. 15c.
A New System of Phrenology. By John S. Hittell.
12mo. 75c.
A Plea for Pantheism. By John S. Hittell 25c.
 LIBERAL BOOKS 5

The Evidences against Christianity. By John S. Hit-

tell. In two large 12roo. volumes. $2 50.
The Odic-Magnetic Letters of Baron Reichenbach.
Translated from the German by John S. Hittell. 37c.
Somnambulism and Cramp. By Baron Reichenbach.
Translated by John S. Hittell. 12 mo. $1.
The Devil's Pulpit or, A Series of Astro-Theological Ser-
;

mons (some of which were heretofore published in "The Beacon"),

by the Rev. Robert Taylor, B.A., author of the " Diegesis," " Syn-
tagma," etc. With a Sketch of his Life, and an Astronomical In-
troduction. One handsome volume, 12mo. Price $1 25.
Taylor's Astro-Theological Lectures, being the second
series of the DeviPs Pulpit, 12mo. $1 37.
Taylor's Belief not the Safe Side, 10c.
Taylor's Lectures on Free Masonry, 25c.
Robert Taylor was one of those rare geniuses in whose waitings the
most laughter-provoking wit was blended with great learning and pro-
found research. He shows that all the modern interpretations of the
" Holy Scriptures " are no more their original meaning, than the lines,
curves, points, circles, angles, etc., etc., of mathematicians are mathemati-
cal science. He has found the key to these Scriptures, and clearly shows
what the sacred writers did mean. In his writings he incidentally embo-
dies the substance of Du Puy's great work — " Origin of all Religions?'
The Mystical Quaternity Analyzed ; or, Who is the
Lord God ? By Robert Taylor. 30 cents.
Who was Jesus Christ ? By an able critic. 10 cents.
Who is the Holy' Ghost? By Robert Taylor. 10 cents.
Who is the Devil? By Robert Taylor. 15 cents.
Thomas Paine's Theological and Political Works,
together with His Life, by the author of "
The Religion of Science."
2 vols.,12mo., $2 00.
Thomas Paine's Political Works. 1 vol., 12mo., $1 00.
Thomas Paine's Theological Works. Together with
His Life, by the author of " The Religion of Science." 1 vol.,
12mo., $1 00.
Thomas Paine's Age of Reason, in paper cover, 25c. ; in
cloth,3t cents.
All the above volumes of Paine's Works, together with his Life,
have just been published on large, new type, on very fine paper, and
in substantial binding. Each volume has a fine steel portrait of
Paine, and the Life (for the full title, see another part of this Cata-
logue) has fine portraits of Rousseau, Paine, and Comte.
How to get a Divorce ; together with the Laws of all
the States of the Union on this subject, and an able plea in favor
of Free-Love, or Passional Emancipation. By a Member of the
New York Bar. 25 cents.
O L.1BKKAL JiuuK.8.

The Divine and Moral Works of Plato, translated

from the original Greek, with Introductory Dissertations and Notes.
First American, from the Sixth Loudon edition, carefully revised
and corrected from Sydenham and Taylor. $1 25.
This work embodies the spiritual doctrines and moral sentiments of
Christianism, and the disciples of Jesus have always been sorely puzzled
to find out how all this came to be known five hundred years before the
birth of their Saviour, whose Gospel "brought life and immortality,"
and such wk sublime moral precepts " " to light." The earlier popes made
strenuous efforts to suppress the works of Plato and Aristotle.
A Message to The "Sovereign People" of The
United States; exhibiting to Their Majesties the Infernal
Treachery or worse Inability of their Keligious Counsellors and of
their Political " Servants," proving the Identity of the Theologi-
cal and Ethical Delusions, exposing the Elective Franchise Hoax,
and Revealing a New and Self-Evidently Efficient Remedy for Su-
perstition, Despotism and Evil. A
Pamphlet of 46 octavo pages.
By Calvin Blanchard. 10 cents. 15 copies for $1 00.
£^T All the profits on this publication will be expended in furnish-
ing Clergymen and Politicians with copies thereof gratis.

Thorndale ; or, The Conflict of Opinions. By Wm. Smith,

author of " A Discourse on Ethics.' 7
$1 25.
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Hand-
some 12mo. 75 cents.
Hob*bes (Thomas), The Complete Works of. Elegant Lon-
don Edition, 16 volumes, octavo. $16 00.
in
j^r Published at $50. Not sent by mail. Only a few copies.
No discount on this work.
A Review of " The Trials of a Mind, in its Pro-
gress to Catholicism." By an ex-Clergyman. 12mo. 15c.
History of the Institution of the Sabbath Day ;

Its Uses and Abuses. With Notices of the Puritans, Quakers, etc.
By William Logan Fisher. 12mo. 62c.
Introduction to Social Science. By George H. Cal-
vert. 12mo. 50c.
Mysticism and its Results. Being an Inquiry into the
Uses and Abuses of Secrecy. By John Delafield, Esq. 12mo. 37c.
Conciliation Naturelle du Droit et du Devoir.
Par Henri Disdier, Avocat. 2 vols., royal 8vo., pp. 1255. $2.

F> •ASSIGNEE, M OOI£S.

(Indispensable to and the safest that can be put
students of progress,
into the hands of those who read for amusement, as I shall demonstrate.)
The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau. A New
Transition, in which not a word of the original is omitted, nor its
 — : — ! —
LIBERAL BOOKS. 7

meaning in any way altered. Two beautiful 12mo. volumes, clotk

gilt, price $2 50.
The London edition of "Rousseau's Confessions'* was so scandalously
deficient of the most recherche passages that the present publisher re-
jected it altogether, and had the whole work translated afresh, by an able
scholar, from the French edition of Madame George Sand, wherein had
been faithfully restored, from the original manuscript sold to the French
Government by Rousseau's widow, all the passages which, when such
"virtuous" rulers as Robespierre and Marat governed France, were
omitted. Reader, the most charming and instructive feat which compo-
sition ever performed is here truly and faithfully reexhibited. Jean
Jacques alone has dared to bare the innermost secrets of the human
heart, and to expose to just abhorrence the abominations which theolo-
gical moralism had perverted human nature into enacting.
u There hardly exists such another example of the miracles which
composition can perform." Lord Brougham.
" There have been what purported to be translations of the world-fa-
mous Confessions of Rousseau before but Mr. Calvin Blanchard's is the
;

first that we know of which is unmutilated and accurate." Putnam's

Monthly.
"It has been translated into every language in Europe; the librarian
of Napoleon devoted a large volume to the classification of the different
editions of it." Ev. Post.
Boccaccio's Decameron ; or, Ten Days' Entertainment. In
one beautiful 18mo. vol., pp. 500, with 18 fine steel engravings. $1.
The gayest and most gallant literary feast that ever regaled human
taste. Rehearsing The Decameron kept a large party of fair ladies and
gallant gentlemen in such a thrill of delight, that the plague which
ravaged Florence in 1348, passed harmlessly by them. That prince of
old fogies, grim Death himself, chuckled for once and hurried on.
The Library of Love. In three neat pocket volumes,
pp. 803, with fine steel engravings. Sold separately at 50c. each,
or $1 50 the set. The most amorous and recherche effusions ever
penned. Comprising
I. OVID'S ART OF LOVE, and Amorous Works entire.
II. BASIA ; The Kisses of Joannes Secundus and Jean Bonnefons.
III. FABLES FROM BOCCACCIO AND CHAUCER. By
John Dryden.
In The Confessions, The Decameron, and The Library op Love, are fairly,
openly and perfectly exhibited, the hitherto and now workings, under the difficulties
which old fogyism throws in its way, of the tender passion to which sentient beings
are indebted for their existence.
Yet to such a pitch has false religion perverted the rationality of the highest
order of sentient beings, that some of them are too " chaste*' to read any of the said
works except privately ; and so very '* modest " as to try to prevent everybody but
themselves from reading them at all
And stranger still, some even, who flatter themselves that they have abandoned
false religion, do yet so clingg to that insidious phase of it— —
moralism that they
continue to imagine ignorance to be a safer guardian for virtue than knowledge !
Oh, how ineradicable is inbred
:
falsehood.
I would insure young ladies and gentlemen against the traps and pitfalls to which
present institutions expose them, who have read every book in my Catalogue, for
half the premium for which I would underwrite those whose natural feelings have
teen so repressed, that pent-up lust crimsons their cheeks with blushes, and casts
8 LIBERAL BOOKS.
—
down their eye-glances with shame, on reading the holy text "Before the roosts
crows twice, thou shalt deny me thrice."
The New York Tribune, in the course of its remarks on the elopement of Mary
Gurney the wife of a rich London banker, with her groom, most wisely says :
y
" The fashionable mode of treatment may be summed up in the terse injunctions,
*
Cover up !' '
Keep dark V Let all reputable people shut their eyes to the innu-
merable escapades, ignore (so far as possible) their existence, aud keep all know-
ledge of them, to the extent of our ability, from the minds of our children, but
especially of our daughters. And it was under the influence of this system that
Mary Gurney, herself an illegitimate child and the offspring of an elopement, was
reared. * * * We believe the system to be radically wrong and practically dis-
astrous. We believe it no more desirable to seal the eyes of the young to the fact
of the existence of Adultery than to that of the existence of Murder."
The passional books which I publish, including even Fourier on the Sexual Rela-
tions, excite no morbid or unnatural curiosity ;for if, in Rousseau's Confessions,
priests and celibats are exposed for unnatural conduct, it is always in such a way
as to excite disgust therefor. Rousseau confesses that his discoveries in that direc-
tion well nigh cured him of a most unnatural habit. They do not present such
conduct as natural or common, as certain law-books, contrived by the most treacher-
ous malice, or by consummate ignorance, and accessible to all curious youth, do ;

nor, above all, as heaven-sanctioned, as the Bible leaves it plainly to be inferred

that the conduct of "righteous" Lot's family was.
Reformers should consider themselves as physicians to the social organism. And
how are physicians to find out how to apply effectual remedies without studying
the symptoms which their patients exhibit.
These Passional Books, studied in connection with Plato, the ablest expounder
of the ethical code which has not altered a particle to this day, show what a mis-
erable quack nostrum moralism is. It was a perfect abortion from the beginning,
as all will discover who read Ovid. They show the disastrous effects of attempt-
ing to repress the natural, and by far the strongest and most imperious of human
passions. Should this knowledge be smothered? Surely thoughtlessness, insanity
or idiocy are the only pleas which can save those who contend that it should be,
from being justly accused as the malicious emissaries of evil, treacherously dis-
guised as the ministers of good.
These books show that society must pursue a radically different course with the
human passions. They show that the human desires cannot be conquered that ;

attempting even to repress them, only causes them to raise the very devil. And
what a horribly dull, monotonous, stupid and dreary world this would be, if the
raid of moralists against gallantry should prove a complete success. If a scheme
of monogamy could be invented, whereby all sexual intercourse out of it would
be impossible, does any one suppose that such a scheme would not upset monogamy
itself, in twenty-four hours' time, no matter what the consequences might be ?
Adultery, fornication, and prostitution, are absolutely inseparable from mono-
gamy they are as much its counterpart as the Devil is the complement of Chris-
;

tianism. Moralists naively confess this they confess that the above " vices " are
;

—
" necessary evils " evils which they despair of curing. " Necessary evils ?'? 'Tis
the most abominable lie ever uttered. 'Tis the most horrible blasphemy that by
any possible form of words can be perpetrated.
Is it not, then, matter of legitimate mirth, that the love passions circumvent, by
any means, all the machinations of gloomy, unnatural, depraved, abhorrent, blas-
phemous old fogyism ? that they show their ability to compel the doctors of the
social organism to study till they find out how to unobstruct the course of natural
law, and render its operation harmonious and good?
Down, I say down, with those guardians of social corruption, hypocrisy, make-
—
believe and cant. Away with that immaculate abortion that most insidious
—
treachery; that complete clog in the way of practical good moralism. Man
Wants the science and art of well-doing. Nothing short of this will avail.
 MY UNDERTAKING AND ITS AUSPICES.

In 1854, Comte's Positive Philosophy and Feuerbach's Essence or

Christianity fell under my observation. Many years before, I had read
Fourier. His system, by itself, however, seemed to me to lack founda-
tion. But Oomte furnished that foundation, and Feuerbach's demon-
stration of the naturalness of " supernaturalism " precluded the possibil-
ity of my coming to any other conclusion in the premises than that the
religious idea was the index to, and nature's guaranty for, that Heaven
on earth, of which Fourier was the prophet but which he, unfortu-
;

nately, attempted to minutely describe at too great a distance, and thus

fell into vagaries, with respect to particulars, which did much to
obscure, and bring into contempt, his most profound and transcendentiy
brilliant discoveries.
I now determined to do all that lay in my power to forward that
human perfection which was no longer a mere vague abstraction, but a
mathematically calculable certainty. I soon placed before the American
public, " The Positive Philosophy " of Auguste Oomte, " The Essence
of Christianity," by Ludwig Feuerbach, and Fourier's " Social Destiny
of Man:'
It is but justice to Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. to say that before I
commenced publishing liberal books, they imported an edition of The
Positive Philosophy a work as much more powerful in the destruction
;

of theology, than anything before written, as Sharp's rifles and artillery

are more destructive than pop-guns and bows and arrows.
Also, the Messrs. Harper & Brothers had the honor to precede me
in the publication of " Howitt's History of Priestcraft." They also, as
I do, publish that silencer of Moses —
-that most powerful antidote to
superstition, priestcraft, and old fogyism, " Vestiges of the Natural
History of Creation."
In fact, the largest publishers both in France, Germany, England, and
the United States are finding it for their interest to publish, not only
the most thorough of what are vulgarly called " infidel books," but even
those books which recognize the rights of the human passions. To such
an extent have passional rights come to be respected, that our most
fashionable periodicals increased their circulation immensely by laying
before their readers that unanswerable plea for the freedom of the affec-
tions, purporting to be a letter from the truly Honorable Mrs. Mary
Gurney.
Do the Harpers, the Browns, the Littles, the Bohns, the Appletons,
the Longmans, and the numerous other eminent publishers who are
putting forth books which are sapping the very foundation of " our holy
religion " in a " quiet way" as their Christian (?) apologists term it,
sincerely believe what they profess to ? "When / professed the religion
of Christianity (which was only whilst I remained ignorant of the fact
that its truth had been understanding^ disputed), I was as sincere as I
am now that I profess the religion of science and I most solemnly
;

declare, that 1 would have suffered martyrdom in its most horrible

form, sooner than I would have published Higgins's " Anacalypsis,"
Comte's " Positive Philosophy," Theodore Parker's works, Buckle's
" History of Civilization in England," " Hume's Essays," the " Vestiges
of Creation," Ho witt's " History of Priestcraft," Humboldt's "Letters to
Von Ense," or hundreds of similar works now put forth in " a quiet
way" by Christian (?) publishers. I most earnestly entreat the Christ-
ian CO apologists, for the " quiet" method of "damning souls" and
 ;

MY UNDERTAKING AND ITS AUSPICES.

" demoralizing mankind," to reflect one moment on the character of the

scheme which they are apologizing for. Do but this, and whatever may
be your conclusions as to religion, you will respect, aye, love me ever
afterward for this hint.
The "Essence of Science" I published in 1859, and "The Religion
of Science " in 1800. These give a view of the results which a practi-
cal application of Comte, Feuerbach and Fourier must produce. They
show conclusively, that nature is sufficient that she spontaneously
; .

tends to perfection. And they demonstrate how man can so facilitate

the process, that this great aim of nature may be attained with rapid
and constantly increasing speed. Up to the present time, so great has
been the demand for books, liberal not only with respect to opposition
to theology and its governmental superstructure, but with respect to
the long-crushed rights of the human passions, that my publications are
now forty-four in number, of large size on the average, and many of
them have, without recourse to auction sales or to the fraudulent and
gambling credit system, reached their fifth edition.

THE CLERGY ARE COMING ROUND.

The clergy have been most encouraging purchasers of mybooks, as
their preaching attests. Scarcely a discourse do they deliver in which
they do not allude to some of them, or their contents, and in a manner
exactly calculated to arouse curiosity respecting, and to stir up inquiry
for them. The best points in their sermons are suggested by my publi-
cations, as all know who have heard the one and read the other. The
books which I publish, and similar ones, are now far more consulted by
the higher clergy than is the Bible itself. Evidently, they long to be
able to preach the religion of science, to expand the infant mind by
means of it, instead of cramping it all but to death within the narrow
compass of the religion of mystery. As, throughout nature, the good
which is capable of arising from use, is in exact proportion to the evil
which arises from abuse, what conceivable good may we not with cer-
tainty expect from that now most abominable of abuses, the church ?

THE RICH ARE WAKING UP.

From the wealthy —from those who are heartily sick of the mockery
of the gilding which more than hides their misery from those who
little
cannot afford whitewash for theirs —who see that the way which am I
showing is the only one whereby wealth can be made valuable to any
extent worth mentioning, have I also received most substantial support.
But I must not mention names. We must "wait a little longer" (and
I am encouraged to think not very long) before it will be popularly
glorious to reward the toils and strengthen the hands of those who are
laboring for the religion of science and its practical liberty and good-
ness.

THE LADIES ARE ON MY SIDE.

Terrified by superstition, and brow-beaten and constrained by old
fogyism, their silver-toned voices and sweet lips may falter out No, but
their ravishing eyes say Yes. Their inmost heart-aspirations are for the
triumph of a religious and social system which will develop them be-
yond a blemish ; thus banishing their jealousies of each other, and ren-
dering them very goddesses at whose feet it will be the highest bliss of
man, commensurately developed, to adore. In their inmost hearts, they
long for the time when love will be universally reciprocal, and when I
 MY UNDERTAKING AND ITS AUSPICES. 3

lovers may, secure from harm and consequent disgrace, spontaneously

luxuriate in each other's embraces.

ALL THE WORLD IS WITH ME.

Mankind express their fears that the intelligible perfection which I,
&n apostle of the religion of science, preach, is " too good to be true.''''
They thus naively own that their very hearts' desire is for the triumph
of the religion of science and for my
success. Is not happiness the wish
of all ? Can any one object to Heaven on earth ? Why
believe in a Mil-
lennium incomprehensibly producible, instead of in one demonstrably
practicable ?
THE OLD FOGIES
even do not hate me ;they but delude themselves when they think
so. Man's own ignorance is the only thing which he really hates. It
is his ignorance alone which stands between him and perfect, and suffi-
ciently lasting happiness ignorance with respect to the modifications
;

and harmonies of which the substantial is precisely as susceptible as; that

figment of the imagination, the "spiritual" is incoherently fancied to
be. There is, there can be, no despotism, no evil, of which the kind of
ignorance just named is not the sole cause.

THE PEESS IS MY ALLY.

The Religious Press, even, indirectly aids me !
THE DAILY "WORLD,"
a newspaper unctuous of holiness, in an elaborate general notice of all
the books published by me, says that they are " without suppression,"
and that I have " wit enough to see that honesty is the best policy ;"
which high eulogium contrasts ludicrously enough with its author's
simultaneous feint of reproving me for my course as a publisher.
Is it a rare specimen of " honesty," and therefore deserving of special
praise, for an American publisher to put forth books of vital importance
u
to mankind " without suppression ?" Have either of the editors of The
World" (one of whom I am told is a " Shakspeare Scholar ") ever been
employed in mutilating European books for the edification of the Ame-
rican public, a public which glories in nothing so much as in being its
own best judge in all matters pertaining to religion, government and
morals ?
The censorship of the press is so odious, that it has to be exercised
with great caution and due formality, even in imperial France. Do pub-
lishers, in "free " America, dare to erect themselves into the most in-
sufferable of tyrants? And am I the only publisher on whom this
great Democratic Republic can safely rely ? " The World's " praise is
either alarmingly significant, or altogether too complimentary. 1 am

well assured that the views of " The World," sub rosd, both with respect
to "the flesh" and " the devil," are "all right," that its whole body
editorial inwardly prefers truth to falsehood; and that they would fain
displace books which perpetuate mystery, despotism and old fugyism by
those which advocate intelligibility which demonstrate how to achieve
;

actual liberty ; which show how abominably the sexual relations have
hitherto been fooled with, and how to remedy that and every other
evil. But whoever dares not say so in a straightforward manner evi-
dently has not yet, as " The World " says that I have, made the grand
discovery that " honesty is the best policy."
 \

4 MY UNDERTAKING AND ITS AUSPICES.

" The World" evidently does not discern the signs of the times. It
libels the intelligence of the age, and underrates nineteenth century
advancement in net daring to approve my course and recommend my
publications, without feigning to be doing the contrary.
Does " The World " expect or desire to be believed sincere by those
whose opinions it values, and whose judgments it respects, when it
affirms that the renowned "Decameron " of Boccaccio* and the world-
famous " Confessions " of Jean Jacques Rousseau, are works of " slen-
der literary merit ?" " The Confessions" says Lord Brougham, " is the
greatest triumph ever won by diction."
Does " The World " sincerely wish it to be understood that it judges
Dry den, Ovid, and Johannes Secundus to be authors of " slender literary
merit?"
Uor shall " The World " excuse itself for advertising my
publications
" gratis" under the pretext of exposing me for attempting to bribe it to
puff them. At the risk of appearing ungrateful, even, I assert, upon my
honor, that I never, either " anonymously " or " personally," offered, or
instigated to be offered, pay to any one for " puffing " or praising my
books that I knew nothing whatever concerning a recent " Puff
;

Gratis" both of myself and my books, until I read it in " The World."
When I cannot do business except by such contemptible methods, I will
retire or, at least, be consistent enough to publish only such books as are
;

conceived in falsehood, and can best be palmed off through corruption.

I am duly grateful to " The World " for its evident good intentions
toward me as a publisher of u Books which are Books," and which are
reliable, or "without suppression;" and, in return, I will give it a piece
of information. Mankind, with the exception of the pitiably unintelli-
gent, are now so sick of mystery, and its superincumbent political,,
social, and moral inefficiency and abomination, that they simply endure
these, together with the gammon which hypocritical cowards 'perpetrate
in consequence thereof because they do not well see how to get rid of
them they patiently suffer these, whilst waiting for the triumph of the
;

intelligible and satisfactory religion of science, and its corresponding

governmental or social art. If you have anything useful, or which,
after duly considering, you deem useful and practical, to offer on reli-
gious and social subjects, or, if you wish to direct attention to useful
books in relation thereto, and guide the thinMng public to where such
books are sold, let what you say indicate directly what you mean. All
but downright fools will like you the better for it, and, what is of vastly
more importance to yourself, or should be, you will thus justly secure
your own respect and esteem.
If we really have an inquisition in this country a power somehow
;

—
lurking in our social structure in our "model republic," which over-
rides its own "free " " Constitution" vetoes Protestantism, and oelies
all our boasts of liberty; a power before whom reformers, or their
friends, have cause to quail, and falter and prevaricate, as " The
World " seemingly does, measures cannot be too promptly taken to
eliminate that abomination, to purge our democratic republic of what,
to it, is immeasurably more humiliating and disgraceful than it can be
m Spain, or in any country where civilization has not advanced to Pro-
testantism and its correlative, the " elective franchise."

* Such writers as Ben Jonson, Dryden, Moliere, and even Shakspeare, have, surreptitiously
Iam model and Koscoe, and even Milton, seem at a
sorry to say r taken Boccaccio for their ;

loss for terms strong enough to express theiradmiration of the genius which conceived " Th&
Decameron*"

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